Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/08/trumps-nightmarish-project-2025-is-summed-up-in-a-one-minute-nutshell-video.html
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I tried to explain “Project 2025” to someone and they rolled their eyes and laughed and said “we have three branches of government and checks and balances and all that.”
But that’s exactly the point. They don’t want checks on their power. Project 2025 is like a “hack”, an involved plan to get around all that. The Supreme Court is already compromised.
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Project 2025: the political plan so dangerous that even the architects of the Iraq War and occupation are worried enough to make a slick commercial warning about it.
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Send your friend to the Project 2025 website. None of their agenda or their plans are secret or even behind a paywall. There’s a freely available pdf on their website that details everything they want to do, and it makes it pretty clear. Your friend just has to read part of it. You don’t even have to read the whole thing.
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There’s a word for that.
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I was just trying to get him to read the wikipedia entry, even just the first few paragraphs. It’s all spelled out right there in a nutshell by a third party.
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Thing to remember is that this is not a Trump plan. He is far to self-absorbed to think through this thoroughly. This is The Heritage Foundation and associated fascist “deep thinkers” who can actually come up with the ways to hamstring our democracy and truly establish an authoritarian autocracy for the foreseeable future. It is no joke.
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Here’s a couple of troubling passages from Project 2025’s playbook. First, a section on the White House Counsel (keep in mind what almost happened with this position during Trump’s first term):
While the White House Counsel does not serve as the President’s personal attorney in nonofficial matters, it is almost impossible to delineate exactly where an issue is strictly personal and has no bearing on the President’s official function. The White House Counsel needs to be deeply committed both to the President’s agenda and to affording the President proactive counsel and zealous representation. That individual directly advises the President as he performs the duties of the office, and this requires a relationship that is built on trust, confidentiality, and candor.
In other words, they want the White House Counsel to be protecting the President, not ensuring that the President follows the Constitution. A couple of paragraphs later, this is made even clearer:
In addition to the White House Counsel, the office includes deputies, assistants,
associates, and legal support staff. The assistant and associate attorneys are often specialists in particular areas of the law and offer guidance to the EOP on issues related to national security, criminal law, environmental law, and a host of administrative and regulatory matters. Attorneys working in the Office of White House Counsel serve as legal advisers to the White House policy operation by reviewing executive orders, agency regulations, and other policy-related functions. Here again, subordinates should be deeply committed to the President’s agenda and see their role as helping to accomplish the agenda through problem solving and advocacy. They should not erect roadblocks out of an abundance of caution; rather, they should offer practical legal advice on how to promote the President’s agenda within the bounds of the law.
The White House Counsel’s office . . . should function more as an activist yet ethical plaintiffs’ firm that advocates for its client—the Administration’s agenda
Sometimes people don’t trust third party representations of things like this, because they think that third party has an agenda. So send him to the source. In this case, the source is pretty clear about what they’re after, and it’s scary as hell.
Correct. Trump is their means through which they plan to implement a fascist Christian Nationalist state. Trump is not smart enough to have come up with any of this.
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They seem to be assuming that elements of the “President’s agenda” will be unlawful and lawyers will be needed to figure out how far they can go without breaking the law.
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More like how they can use legalese BS to sound legal and let friendly judges rubberstamp the agenda…
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Yep. That’s exactly what that means. The entire document is putting out the idea that (a) the President can do anything he wants, he has almost unlimited power, and (b) everyone in the executive branch should be working to protect and defend the President, not to protect and defend the Constitution.
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Which also means that if we get lucky and Trump has a stroke or something before the election, whatever form of the Republican party that remains will still be pushing this agenda until they manage to get a candidate into office. Kind of makes Civil War 2 sound inevitable eventually, unless our country can somehow root out its fascist problem nonviolently before it’s too late.
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You mean… like a King? Gee, if only the founding fathers had discernible opinions on kings we could figure out if this is a good idea or not. /s
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Close…
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I don’t know whether this works, to be honest. You and I read that text and see what they’re trying to do because we know who wrote it, what they were trying to do last time they were in power and what else they are up to. Someone who, let’s say, wants to give them the benefit of the doubt because they’re naive reads things like
they should offer practical legal advice on how to promote the President’s agenda within the bounds of the law.
and thinks that all is alright because the law is being respected. It doesn’t help that it’s clearly a fig leaf, because that’s all that’s needed until it’s too late.
By all means send them to the original source, but I honestly don’t think that document is as scary to people who haven’t been following politics closely enough to read between the lines as some might think.
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You don’t have to read between the lines to see the intent here. It’s a matter of the document’s tone, which isn’t a frothing screed but rather a measured, legalistic outline of how to gradually subvert a liberal democrqcy.
The Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society think-tankers who put it together don’t want to scare anyone, except of course for those with the critical thinking skills and education to understand the implications and intended outcomes of Project 2025.
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I do worry, as others have commented, that people won’t take this seriously enough. It’s hard to encapsulate in an “elevator pitch” what they are planning. All the years the MAGAts and their predecessors have been squealing about everything being a George Soros plot, are pure, uncut projection; Leonard Leo is the main architect of this, very literal, Christian Nationalist Authoritarian Coup. It is a documented plan to arrest the progress of our constitutional democracy and replace it with an absurd, frightening overthrow that will criminalize so many groups and behaviors you won’t even be able to keep up. Mix delusional authoritarianism with spiral-eyed christian-esque white supremacy and you’ll have a true hellscape of abuse and repression. Read their deportation scheme; it’s disgustingly well-detailed. It’s not a joke, and it’s not an option to just hope that “checks and balances” take care of it. The point is that they are planning, explicitly, to remove all checks and balances permanently, so there won’t be a way to recover any of the basic human rights we’ve slowly gained over 200 years. Historical atrocities like genocide, slavery and concentration camps will become part of our daily reality. The buffoonery that masks 45’s pathology is easy to laugh at and we all love fart jokes, but it isn’t just 45; he’s just a figurehead. This is a network of xtian right-wing extremists that have decided that god loves them the best, and so they should dominate and control all aspects of life in the US, and eventually the world. Look up the 7 Mountains Dominion statement. Who besides insane, sociopathological nutters even thinks this way, much less forming a host of think tanks, funds, PACs, lobbyist groups and a series of rallies about it?
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Sums it up nicely, actually…
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I don’t find that ad scary enough at all. Also they barely linked Trump to Project 2025 in the video. If they want to change minds, I don’t see how this helps.
Still I applaud the sentiment. They’re still jerks, imo.
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