Today, Explained - RIP Project 2025?

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Project 2025 and J.D. Vance have brought fringe policies to the presidential campaign. Democrats are using both to label the Republican ticket "weird." Shelby Talcott of Semafor and Eli Stokols from Politico explain how this messaging strikes voters. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Matt Collette and Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Earlier this year, Today Explained brought you an episode about Project 2025, the 900-page Heritage Foundation fever dream-slash-conservative blueprint for America. More recently, it has run into trouble. The problems all started when people read what was in it. There is a section that indicates that women's fertility should be measured and tracked monthly. It's on page five. They want to mandate that all students in schools receiving federal funding must complete the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. In plain English, that's a military entrance exam. Recognizing its unpopularity with both parties, the Trump campaign has tried to distance itself.

However, it turns out Vance wrote the foreword for a forthcoming book written by Project 2025's architect, Kevin Roberts. Now, the leader of Project 2025 has stepped down. Is it over? We have answers coming up. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with Shelby Talcott. Shelby's a politics reporter for Semaphore, and she joined us earlier this year to discuss Project 2025. And then there was a development. Shelby, what's the recent news that has everyone talking again about Project 2025. The director, Paul Danz, decided last week that he was going to be stepping down from his position, which is obviously a big deal because he is sort of one of the folks who has run this entire thing

for the past few years. The reality is, as conservatives and anyone who isn't really a radical, we are, as a profession, really getting snowed under. And amid that, obviously, Donald Trump's team has started firing back. Think tanks do think tank stuff. They come up with ideas. They say things. Look, I like Heritage Foundation, but our candidate for president is Donald Trump. And Donald Trump is running on restoring common sense, not on ideological lunacy. So it's this whole multifaceted drama over this very high level employee

stepping down as Donald Trump's team is attacking the project. What did Mr. Dan say about why he's leaving? He said that it was sort of pre-planned, which is what Kevin Roberts told us as well. He claimed that he had been here for a few years. He had sort of done his job, what he was supposed to do, and he would be leaving sometime later in August. They sort of indicated it was pre-planned, but amid the drama going on with the Trump team, that's why this has garnered such big news. Kevin Roberts is the head of the Heritage Foundation, yeah? Correct.

Okay, so Mr. Dan says, I am stepping down for normal reasons, completely normal reasons, and yet there's a lot of speculation that he's been either forced to step down or asked to step down. What is the informed speculation about why Danz is leaving? What are people saying? So let's back up a few months really quickly. Donald Trump's top aides have begun attacking Project 2025 because the media has said, here are the policies in Project 2025 and sort of equated them with Donald Trump's campaign. The most terrifying policy proposals for a possible Trump second term are all spelled out in one document, Project 2025.

That's that conservative effort to install a government in waiting for a second Trump term. Donald Trump's campaign has started coming out and saying, no, this is not accurate. We have our own agenda. We have no involvement with Project 2025, although they do have a lot of former Trump administration officials involved in the project, which is why a lot of people sort of tie them together. But in recent months, that criticism has extended to Trump himself. I don't know what the hell it is. It's Project 25. He's involved in Project, and then they read some of the things, and they are extreme.

I mean, they're seriously extreme. So it's sort of blown up into this pretty major deal when you have, you know, the top of the ticket himself and not just his aides coming out so aggressively against this massive effort from one of the biggest conservative think tanks in the country. Can you put your finger on the reason that Project 2025 has so many Americans freaked out, uneasy, wanting to know more, feeling like this is a bad thing? I think it has to do, listen, the Project 2025 book, I actually have it sitting on my desk right now. It's almost 900 pages. And of those 900 pages, there are a lot of policies

that are sort of traditional Republican policies, right, that we've heard of for many years. But then there's also policies that are far more conservative than a lot of Americans are comfortable with, particularly on abortion. The foreword to the entire thing reads, quote, The Dobbs decision is just the beginning. The next conservative president should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers

to protect innocent life. The policy book recommends that the Justice Department reinforce the Comstock Act, a law that restricts or prohibits medical abortion drugs from being sent via mail. And so it's an 1873 law, which is, you know, definitely a little bit more of a conservative belief than a lot of Americans are comfortable with. But it also wants to essentially rehaul the federal government. The biggest proposed change would be to the executive branch. It would reintroduce former President Trump's Schedule F proposal, removing some 50,000 formerly nonpartisan employees in federal agencies in favor of, quote, political appointees who are answerable to the president. So some of the changes in the policy book are drastic and aggressive,

and that is concerning to a lot of people. All right, so Donald Trump is distancing himself, presumably because Donald Trump knows that Project 2025 could pose a problem for him if enough Americans feel like this thing is really not for us. It's too far right. How did the Trump campaign react to the news that Danz was leaving? They, I would say, reveled in it. His campaign advisors, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, reiterated that the project had nothing to do with the campaign. And they said that reports of Project 2025's demise would be greatly welcome and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with Trump and his campaign.

It will not end well for you. So sort of a threat there as well of you try to do this like Project 2025 is, you will not have a role in the conservative movement should Trump win. All right. So when you and I spoke months ago, you made very clear that Project 2025 can only be a thing if there is an executive, i.e. a president, to implement it. If there's no person, it's just a bunch of 900 pages of ideas. Somebody's got to do the things to make it worth anything. So if Donald Trump is saying, uh-uh, I'm not into it, I want nothing to do with it, is it fair to say that Project 2025 is dead? You know, it's interesting because some of these policy proposals and certainly the idea that they have this massive database of conservatives who are willing to go work in some sect of the government suggests that this theoretically could also be trickled down into state and local government. And so certainly I think there will be other facets for Project 2025 to be used

if Donald Trump doesn't win. But the big crux is about this presidential election. And so obviously they, you know, want Donald Trump in the White House. And a lot of people at Project 2025 maintain that despite Trump's sort of public bravado about this whole thing, at the end of the day, there is confidence that he's going to use it in some way, shape or form. The function of Project 2025 was to have a playbook for day one. If the Trump administration is saying we're not going to use this playbook. Have they offered a different playbook that they plan to use? Yeah, they have their own. I believe it's called Agenda 47 on their website. And it's obviously not as in-depth as this project, right? Donald Trump has sort of his own policy proposals, which was the big criticism from his team was that, listen, we have our own policy proposals,

right? For example, on abortion, what Donald Trump has said publicly in recent months differs from what Project 2025's proposal is. At the same time, there's a lot of proposals in Project 2025 that are sort of standard policies that Donald Trump himself has pushed over the past several years. So they do overlap in that sense. One problem that Donald Trump has is that Donald Trump is not always truthful. I wonder, in the popular mind, is it too late for Donald Trump to really distance himself from Project 2025? Is the damage already done? Because he might have every intention of using it. It's a fair comment, right? Because as you said, he has said things at one point and then said that ended up doing something

completely differently. And I also think that it's hard for people to separate Project 2025 from Donald Trump, A, because some of those policies in that book are the same and are based on things that he has said over the past several years, but also be because there's so many people who used to work for Donald Trump who are involved in this and remain somewhat close to him. And so it is hard to sort of separate those two realities, particularly given that it's only been in the last few months that Donald Trump himself has started to come out and be critical of the project. The Harris campaign and the Democrats know that Project 2025 is a weakness for Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance. How have they reacted to Mr. Dan stepping down? They have tried to continue tying Donald Trump together with Project 2025, which has been what they've been doing for the last several months.

They saw sort of an opening. They saw that a lot of people, particularly in social media with young voters, were organically interested in Project 2025, which is why they began attacking Donald Trump over it in the first place. Project 2025. Randy, can you believe they put that thing in writing? They're maintaining that argument, and they're still certainly going after Project 2025 and Donald Trump, which is part of the reason that his team has been so frustrated. Donald Trump and his extreme allies want to take our nation back to failed, trickle-down economic policies. Back to union busting.

Back to tax breaks for billionaires. Donald Trump and his allies have really ramped up their attacks. And Donald Trump's team doesn't want to deal with that, of course. Shelby Talcott of Semaphore. Coming up, the Harris campaign has landed on yet another line of attack. Don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird? Yeah! I love Miss. It's Today Explained. We're back with Eli Stokols. He's a White House reporter for Politico. Eli, polling shows us that Project 2025 strikes many Americans as weird.

And the Harris campaign has picked up on this and on some other things that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have said. And they've started using it as a line of attack. What is the plan for weird? It's not Project 2025 where there's reams of paper, you know, on this. And this is like a thing people have been thinking about for a long time. This was sort of an organic development. We started seeing and hearing from a lot of potential VP contenders. They started making the rounds on television, on cable news. Feels like the first day of school. Everything's possible. We're exciting. The rooms are clean. The building smells great. The kids are coming in in new clothes.

It's that politics of joy, the politics of the possible. You know, there was a lot more attention being paid to the race itself, the excitement around Harris and the Democratic messaging as it related to Harris and also to the Republican ticket. Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, you know, he sort of interjected in an interview and said, these guys are just weird. We do not like what has happened where we can't even go to Thanksgiving dinner with our uncle because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary. And I think bringing back people together. Well, it's true. These guys are just weird. And it is, you know, they're running for He-Man Women Haters Club or something. And then over the course of the next couple of days, you started to hear more people using this. The agenda, the way they talk to people, the way they address people, it is bizarre.

It's weird. It is weird. You won't let any sexist or racist rhetoric that is coming from weirdos. And yep, y'all, they are weird. You know, it was only a matter of days before Harris in a rally used it herself. And by the way, don't you find some of their stuff to just be plain weird? It just is more colloquial than a lot of Biden's language about Trump and the threat to democracy. And not that people didn't believe what Biden was saying, but the way he was talking about it had sort of ceased to land. It wasn't landing. It wasn't connecting with people. And so I think there was a sense that talking about it in a more informal way, with Walls being the one who was talking about this,

it was a very Midwestern way, people noticed. But it just sounded like more of a sort of gut-level vernacular. And it's sort of an umbrella term for all the things that Trump and Vance were saying and that was coming out there. And so it caught on and we'll see where it goes from here. So weird is colloquial, yes. Weird is also a very different vibe than if Donald Trump is elected, we could be looking at the end of 200 plus years of American democracy. That's really dire. Weird is just like, oh my God, guys. What can you tell us about whether or not the Democrats understood that they needed to start talking in different terms, less existential terms? I think that seeing the reaction to the Tim Walz clip initially and seeing how quickly the Harris campaign, Democratic lawmakers adopted it.

I mean, I think the reaction tells you that maybe the clip itself sparked that realization. It made clear to a lot of Democrats that actually there is a better way to talk about this or perhaps a more effective way of getting people to kind of, you know, to reframe how people are seeing Donald Trump and the Republican ticket. You know, it helped that there were a lot of new details coming out simultaneously about J.D. Vance that were, it would be hard to come up with a better word to describe them than weird. We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made.

And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. And it's just a basic fact. Biden is a person who prides himself on sounding like a regular person. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. He always peppers aides who are sort of, you know, using lofty language, putting it in his speeches or giving him briefings in those kinds of terms to sort of like, give it to me straight, simplify it, like say it to me like a normal person can understand. And he wants to talk that way. But I think, you know, over time, his call, his speeches about democracy had, I wouldn't say

a grandiosity to them, but just like a seriousness, a gravity to them. And also, this isn't just limited to democracy, right? This sort of broadens the frame, widens the frame, and it's not just the threat Trump may pose to American democracy. It's him being at his rallies, going on these extended riffs about showerheads. So showerheads, you take a shower, the water doesn't come out.

You want to wash your hands, the water doesn't come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair, I don't know about you, but it has to be perfect. Or having this conversation with himself about, you know, if you're on an electric boat. If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted?

Or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? You know, weird is sort of this broad umbrella term that, yes, it can be, it can include, you know, J.D. Vance suggesting that childless cat ladies are the scourge of the country. But it also includes these weird Trump riffs. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are, of course, the butts of the joke. Have they responded at all? I have caught wind of some Republicans on Fox News suggesting, like, well, you're the weird ones. You know, they're calling us weird.

I mean, I've seen, like, you know, chyrons, right? The graphic on the screen sort of taking issue with the weird depiction. So they're clearly aware of it. They're the weird ones. Nobody's ever called me weird. I'm a lot of things, but weird I'm not. You know, that tells you that this has been effective just in the sense that enough people are talking about this and amplifying it that you know it's kind of, it's registering with a lot of people. Weird is hilarious when someone else is being called it, but anybody who has ever gone to junior high school knows that when it's you on the other end or when it's someone you like on the other end, it really does hit pretty hard. I wonder whether this, and I'm not

the only person to ask this, whether this runs the risk of alienating people who are somewhere in the middle or firing up Donald Trump supporters even further. So we see people wearing t-shirts that say, I'm a weird Republican. In the same way that we saw a lot of Americans get very irritated by Hillary Clinton's comment, lo these eight years ago, about parts of America being full of baskets of deplorables, right? Could this backfire? Everyone on the left seems to know what they're talking about when they brand Trump and Vance as weird. But I think that it could hit certain people the wrong way. And it does, you know, depending on your experience or your state of mind, it does risk sounding like kind of juvenile name calling. What might sound plain spoken and Midwestern to a lot of people and accurate to a lot of people might to someone else sound just sort of petty and unserious, not to mention potentially offensive. So the real test is going to be, are there ads focusing on this? Or is it just

something that people say here and there when they're on TV or on the stump? On the flip side, there will also be people who say, the Republican Party led by Donald Trump has been saying very cruel things for a very long time. And I imagine some Democrats might be inspired by the sense that their party is at least getting in the game with the name calling a little bit. I think that's true, too. I think, you know, you're right. I mean, anybody that's complaining about having their feelings hurt from weird, you know, you could see a response where, you know, you think weird is bad and roll through a litany of things that, you know, Trump has said about any number of people. I mean, you know, weird is pretty mild as far as a Trump insult or nickname would go.

But I do think that to that point, you know, there's long been the sense that Trump, however coarse, however offensive he may be to a lot of people, that he's an excellent communicator. He's excellent at sort of repeating these simple mantras or descriptions or nicknames and getting things to stick, that he communicates and drives a message far better than Democrats. And he's shown that to be true. I don't know that everyone's sort of like, yeah, let's get down in the mud and, you know, that Democrats are eager to kind of play Trump's game and further coarsen politics or the discourse. But I think there's definitely a desire to figure out

how to communicate effectively and with blunt force and simply. Because that's what Trump has done for a long time. And I think to that point, there is a sense that watching the Tim Walz clip and watching other people pick that up, you know, what we have heard is like, finally, we're getting it. We're figuring out how to communicate,

as Trump has, in a very kind of straightforward, gut-level, colloquial tone. Eli Stokols is a White House reporter for Politico. Today's episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlain and edited by Amin El-Sadi. It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Matthew Collette. Andrea Christen's daughter and Patrick Boyd are our engineers. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.