The Chris Cuomo Project - The Top 3 Moves Republicans Must Make in 2025

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Chris Cuomo outlines three major moves Republicans must make to succeed in 2025, urging them to redefine their identity beyond Trump, pursue comprehensive immigration reform, and change their tone to prioritize unity over division. Cuomo explores the challenges of fiscal conservatism, the political risks of cultural wars, and the opportunities for the GOP to reclaim trust and rebuild their platform in a fractured political landscape. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Support our sponsors: Shopify Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at SHOPIFY.COM/chrisc Factor Eat smart with Factor. Get started at FACTOR MEALS.com/cuomo50off and use code cuomo50off to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. Oracle Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in HALF if you move to OCI. For new US customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this special offer at Oracle.com/CCP AG1 is offering new subscribers a FREE $76 gift when you sign up. You’ll get a Welcome Kit, a bottle of D3K2 AND 5 free travel packs in your first box. So make sure to check out DrinkAG1.com/ccp to get this offer! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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How amazing is that? CozyEarth.com slash Chris. If you get a post purchase survey, please say you heard about Cozy Earth from the Chris Cuomo Project podcast. You guys send me the comments saying thanks. You love the stuff. Tell them. Chris Cuomo here from the Chris Cuomo Project. Thank you for joining me as always. So here is the challenge for the GOP. Now, why aren't I talking Trump when he is the putative head, right?

They do what he says all the time because he is done. He is in legacy mode. Okay, that's why he's talking about all these odd, but grand ideas, okay? I wanna annex Greenland. I wanna annex Canada. I wanna rename this. I wanna take back that. Why? He's just reaching for big things

because big men, powerful men have done big things. That's how you wind up on Rushmore, which he may or may not know which state it's in. Look, it's too easy to tease Trump. What I want to talk about is something that is much more fundamental, which is the future of what this party does with this administration. It can't just be about engaging Trump's every whim. Cause remember, he's on the way out. And not only do I reject the idea that he's trying to set it up so that his kid can take over for him,

but, and here's why. One, I don't think that's true. And two, even if it were true, that's not something that you should be looking forward to. Right? We don't have a monarchy, do we? Not yet, anyway, right? So for the GOP, they have a very distinct challenge here. We can't just be a Trump rubber stamp.

It may not be good for us. Well, why not? He's what people voted for. Well, he's who people voted for. And unlike his lawyers, I don't see it as a commanding victory. I saw it as a victory, a victory that I announced first in America on television

and one that I saw coming as many did for many weeks. Why? Because it was a grievance election and the Democrats own the status quo and they screwed up their own process and their own candidate and candidates matter and Trump was the less bad choice and they thought they win that contest but they got wrong where people are and what they were really worried about and it turned out that they were not just worried about Trump as a person as much as they were about their own person. So the GOP has showed once already

that they're not just gonna be Trumpers. How? He asked them during this last little bit of brinksmanship at the end of 2024 to raise the debt ceiling. Why? What is the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling is the amount of money America can buy for the bills that ran up already. Okay?

It is not what you can do now, it's what you did then. So why would he care about that? This is the last administration. What does he care about the ability to pay for it? He could just blame it on them. His tax cuts. The tax cuts that he wants to do will require borrowing to pay for them. Why? Because he's going to reduce revenue and not reduce spending the way he needs

to. Now, why would you say that? Why would you be so negative and cynical? No, not. I'm just looking at what he did the last time. And he said he wants to extend the tax cuts from 2016. I didn't like those tax cuts. Why? They weren't targeted to the right people. You didn't get enough. I got too much. That's what I think. You don't agree? That's fine. You don't have to agree. But you have to agree that he did not pay for them.

How do we know? Because the conservatives went crazy in 2016 about it. Remember the whole riff of Paul Ryan, who's a real conservative? Now we saw that that spirit is not dead in the GOP. You got about 30 something members, which is more than enough, T party plus, who said, we're not raising it. Now we're done with all this spending.

The spending's killing us. The debt and the deficit. No one gets elected on the debt and deficit, but it is the most real problem. Frankly, it's almost the most real national security issue that we face. We are so in hock to so many different entities, public and private.

Why do you think you can't boss around China the way that they'd all love to? Hold too much of our paper. So first challenge is, will the GOP recognize that they are not just Trump proxies and they have to make a decision about whether or not they're going to be real conservatives? Because if they are, then they are going to be at odds with Mr. Trump when it comes to what he wants to spend based on whether he can pay for it, based on whether he's gonna do cuts

or he's gonna do tax cuts, because it's hard to do both if you wanna spend. It's hard to do both. So that's their first challenge. They have to pick a lane is what I would call it. Now, I think that the lane they should pick is fiscal austerity. It's a tricky lane, why? Because eventually people are going to see that their services drop. You know, there's this illusion or really

delusion in our politics. The same people who are bitching about a smaller government benefit from government more than they seem to recognize in their own lives. The more you go down the economic and social strata, the more government services are at play because there's more need for support. That's what our society is about, is helping those who can't help themselves. Now there is a sweet spot of people who get double fucked

where they are in a social and economic strata where they're barely getting along, but they're not getting as helped as many, as much as people below them. And they're not able to help themselves as much as the people above them. That's a sweet spot. Some people call it the middle class.

Some people call it the working class. I think it's more nondescript than that, but I think it's a very real challenge, which is why people stay away from it. Now, their first move is to pick a lane. I say pick the fiscal conservative lane, not the lawfare lane. You can't do both.

They can walk and chew gum. They always say that, they never do it. We just lived a period where they barely once again figured out how to pay for the next few months what they had already spent the previous year, the lowest bar of their existence, of their professional duty. So no, they can't do both.

But you gotta pick a lane, because if you go to the law fair lane and wanna investigate everybody who investigated Trump, you're not gonna get this other stuff done. It's gonna be a distraction. Now, I think it's a problem and I think it's rife with hypocrisy. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

Stop investigating each other because you're pissed off about the investigations. Just focus on us. Focus on what you do for us. And it's bullshit that those investigations and oversight are for us. They're not, they're for you. They're for advantage.

They change nothing. They make no new legislation that does anything for anybody except you guys. That's it, okay? And now you have on the one hand, Trump having his lawyers try to keep the report of Jack Smith from coming out because he doesn't want any bad news about an investigation that was done about him, but he wants to investigate other people and have you know about that. You see what I'm saying? Pick a lane. If you're against that, enough.

Be about being fiscal conservatives. Now you got something that can appeal. Okay? That's one. Two, the first major legislative initiative. Now, yes, it is the executive that will propose big initiatives, and then Congress has to make it into law. However, immigration is the joint interest. Immigration, comprehensive immigration reform. People have been talking about it for 20 years, but you've never had as much of the country on the same page as you do right now. You just have to remember to balance hard and soft,

to balance strong and sweet. America is not a place that will embrace harshness for that long. Look, even this election, commanding win, he didn't even win half the country. Okay, yeah, but he won both houses of Congress, barely. This was not a mandate election where you just blew, like Obama had,

where you just blew the other guy out of the water and you were in charge of everything. In big margins where you can even have discrepancies and disagreement within your own ranks and you'd be fine because you had that much control. It's not the case. And that's why this cabal is so important. And I'll probably be talking about them a lot

once they give themselves a name. I hope they go with the conservatives, to be honest. I mean, it'd be nice to have someone who has a pure political philosophy again. But immigration reform is a sweet spot. And if they can get that done, it will be a huge achievement for them to carry into the midterms,

let alone until the next cycle. They finally fix something that everybody has been duped into believing is our biggest national security concern. Do I agree with that? No, doesn't matter. Does not matter. That's where people are. Every poll, overwhelmingly people are worried about the southern border, so fix it. What piece of legislation would matter more than that? Now, Trump's gonna say the tax cuts, but he's not gonna give you the spending cuts. So if I'm a Republican, I'm pushing for immigration

as the first major legislation. He can do a lot of the other shit that he wants to do with his little tariff stuff until they start litigating it. And that is gonna be very unsatisfying because tariffs just don't mean what he's suggesting to you they mean. They're never more than a single digit percentage

of overall revenue. That's why they came up in 1913 or whatever with the income tax. You can't fund the government on just tariffs. And look, there is a fundamental lie here, okay? China doesn't pay the tariff, the importing company in America does, all right? And that's why the prices go up when it happens.

Now, does it have to be that linear? No, it can be negotiated differently. And that's why there are many tariffs in place. Now, he says, I have the most tariffs ever. It's not true. There've been two different periods in American history where they had more. And that doesn't really matter.

He's hyperbolic by nature, that's fine. But Biden even kept some of his tariffs against China. But also know this, you may not know this. The tariffs, China was supposed to buy like 50% more stuff from us, they didn't. Now there was a pandemic and there were supply chain issues that came in, but they didn't even buy what they were buying

before the tariffs, let alone the new margin that they were supposed to buy after. What does that tell you? One, Trump doesn't tell you the whole story, welcome to politics, and two, that tariffs aren't as simple as he makes them. But he can play with his tariffs as a distraction from the tax cuts and allow the Republicans to focus on a different piece of legislation as their primary initiative. And I think it should be immigration reform.

I think it would be huge for them. Support for the Chris Cuomo project comes from I Restore. Holidays are over, sure, sure. but it is never too late to give yourself what you really want. How about you treat yourself with the iRestore Elite and then you can get that hair regrowth solution that you actually deserve. Listen, science has moved the bar. This is not a gadget. It is a powerful FDA cleared laser cap designed to fight thinning hair and hair loss with clinically proven results.

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I don't get it. I should use my own code. And don't forget, if you're asked in a post purchase survey, tell them you heard about Cozy Earth from me, Chris Cuomo on the Chris Cuomo Project. Now, the third one is the hardest. The GOP has to change dialogue. They cannot be the party of us versus them.

It's not gonna get them where they wanna be. They're already at a registration disadvantage. They're being helped by this new found understanding and respect of being independent, which I love. I never thought we would see it the way we saw it in this election. I didn't think we'd see it this soon. But more people said they voted as an independent.

People say to me when I say that, so they voted for Kennedy? No, you voted for Trump or you voted for Harris. But you did it not as a function of fealty to a party, but because you cared about something enough that made you make a choice. And I know that people weren't psyched about the choices. I get it, we've had shitty choices

for a bunch of cycles in a row. You're not wrong. And there are reasons for that. But people saying, I am not loyal to the Democrats or the Republicans, I'm loyal to different issues and to how I see it for my family and my community is a huge step in the right direction.

The GOP should seize on that and see it as an opportunity to change the dialogue. And instead of not just playing at like when Trump says it's time for us to come together, well then do something that brings us together. Then do something that's not about you that's about us. Then do something that's not divisive. And that's the same challenge for the GOP.

Instead of playing small ball and like the politics of identity and type and talking about trans, which is like, you know, a minuscule fraction of our society, talk about what matters to most and talk about what can bring people together. There's several different areas. One, the future of the job base. College is not for everyone. It is not getting us a good return on investment. Listen to someone who's got two kids in college and a third on the way. It is not a good return on investment, especially if they're not STEM kids, science, technology, engineering, and math.

The trades matter. They matter to our entrepreneurial base. They matter to our small business base. The artisan class is really important in a society. You know, when you study cultures, you study their artisans, their architecture, their infrastructure, what they created, how they built, how they lived, way before you talk about what songs they sang and who had the most money. We have forgotten that.

And we're like a five to two ratio. For every five members of the trades who are leaving, they're being replaced by two. Why? We took the art out of being an artisan. Shop class and both sees and all these alternative education. Like if you're too stupid to do what everybody else is doing, go turn a wrench. It's a mistake. It was never true. They're different kinds of intelligence and the different types of practical applications of skill, not just in an economy, but in life. And I got to tell you, I don't know a lot of men

who prize the ability to day trade as much as they do, the ability to fix your own car or to build your own house or to fix things in your house, right? When you think about it, why? Because we still have an understanding of what it is to be an adult, to be capable. And no, you don't have to be a man, women can do it too.

My favorite thing to see on social media is girls who are into cars and fixing them themselves and being renters and racers, I'd love it. It's awesome. And as a girl dad, it's awesome for me. My girls don't like to do it, but I would love it if they did. I would encourage them very much. I taught the oldest one how to drive stick. I'm doing what I can. The point is that's a big area of common agreement and assessment

and need that they could own. Okay. What's another one? We wanna talk so much about what we don't like being taught to our kids. How about a space of what is being taught to our kids? And I'm going to education with these two first ideas. Why?

Because we care most about our kids. So if you come at me about something that may be good for my own and helping their lives, you got me. You got a hook in me already. All right? They should start talking about, instead of what they don't want taught in schools, talk about what they do want in schools. And I don't mean prayer, and I don't mean the Bible.

Okay? You can get to the same place secularly. Okay? place, secularly, okay? Why don't they push for the introduction of a nationally mandated citizenship curriculum in school where literally we teach the kids how to be decent people. That's their parents' job. Family's broken down. That's the church's job. Society's broken down. That's the job that they're gonna learn with their community. Society is broken down. The only place that's making men and women these days is the military and they don't do the best job in the world

but they do better than a lot of other institutions in our society, if not all of them. We need help. Everybody knows it. Bullying, phone, obsessiveness, body issues, how they treat each other, how they treat sex, how they penalize one another with cancel culture. There's so much fucked up stuff that's going on in our society today. Why not seize on that and say, instead of just talking about what I don't want you teaching my kid

because I think you're trying to make them all chop off the genitals, why don't you suggest, encourage, and fund a national citizenship curriculum? Learn about government. Oh, they're supposed to do that anymore. They don't. They don't do it well enough. Okay? About what's happening in the world, about how they're supposed to treat each other, about conflict resolution, about what is Judeo-Christian

ethic. What does that mean? How are we supposed to behave? How are we supposed to see each other? How do you deal with beef? Well, why not suggest that? I think it would be a great idea. The third one is somebody has to choose to be better. Now, I'm suggesting this to both parties. It is not going to get you where you want to be, especially post-Trump, to just say the other side is worse. Whoever seizes on the initiative of giving people reason to believe that they're invested in being better. Now look, on a baseline level, a very sur-facial level, a cursory level, that's the sell of MAGA, make America great again.

Now I've always seen it as inherently reductive. You're saying America is not a great country right now. I don't agree with that. And I don't even like it as a sell, but the sell is I'm gonna be better. Now I just don't think that he really delivers on that with how he carries himself and how he talks about everybody else.

I think that he's always talking about what and who is worse and trying to scare you, but there is space. Because I got to tell you, that doesn't work anywhere else in society, only in our politics. And the party that grabs onto being better and owns it and doesn't fall prey to the pettiness of comparison and just calling out the flaws and foibles, right?

You can't just, you know, as Democrats, you can't just point at Matt Gaetz and Trump all day long and say, look how terrible these people are, look how terrible, vote for us. You got to be better, just not, not worse. You understand? There's space for the Republicans to do that. They used to be the character counts party. They used to be the party of the book of virtues. They used to be the party of faith and community. And those were the values, not just give me my gun, let me kill anybody who comes at me if I stand my ground, not I don't like anybody who's different. You know, that's what it's been reduced to. I think there's space for Republicans to be about a lot more than that.

And the Republican Party that I knew very well growing up. It wasn't how I was raised, but it was a lot of my extended family and my friends, for sure I married into a Republican Party of real Republicans. They're not worried about trans all day long. They're worried about the debt. They're worried about the deficit. They're worried about our tone

and our level of decency and indecency and how kids seem to not know how to behave anymore. And their parents don't either. There's spaces there. You wanna talk culture, we can. How you talk about it, in what areas, and in what tone matters just as much. So those are my ideas of the big three moves

for the GOP to make once this administration starts. You gotta pick a lane of who you are and what you're about. You've gotta pick a major initiative in that first two years to get it done before the midterms. And you've got to make a decision to change tone. Those are the three big moves that I see for the Republican party. What do you see?

I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you very much for joining, subscribing, following here at the Chris Cuomo Project. I'll check you out on NewsNation as always, 8P Eastern, every weekday night. And if you're into the fitness journey that I'm going on for the next few months, hit me up at the sub stack. I'm going to take you all through the food, the movement, and everything I'm taking to get me to a better place. I'll see you there.

I'll see you on TV, I'll see you everywhere. Let's get after it.