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Joining us now is Philip Wegman.
He's with Real Clear Politics.
He serves as a White House reporter here to talk about Project 2025, which we learned a lot about and heard a lot about during the campaign.
But does it have a presence even today now that we have a president-elect?
Yeah, that's the million-dollar question here because Heritage put together this project and they've been doing this since the Reagan administration.
What was different this time around though is that they invited the entire conservative constellation to get underneath their banner and prepare policy and then personnel lists for the incoming Republican administration.
And I got to tell you, no one cared about Project 2025 when it first started.
And I can tell you that with authority because I broke the story two years ago, it wasn't that interesting until that 900-page policy document got out there.
You had Democrats who were taking a closer look.
And with good reason, they were pointing out that a lot of these policies had been written by Trump alumni.
And so you had President Biden and Vice President Harris making the argument that this is a playbook for Donald Trump.
It basically gave Democrats a lot of examples to hit Donald Trump over the head with.
What's the official stance of the Trump administration on Project 2025?
Now, we've heard this a dozen times at this point, both from President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Vance, which is no one speaks for the campaign except for us.
That's the argument that they made repeatedly.
There are some examples of cross-pollination.
Of course, you have alumni, for instance, folks like Tom Homan, Peter Navarro, writing this project.
And then also, the expectation is that just like in previous administrations, that Trump would pick from some of these Heritage staff lists.
So that was sort of the controversy.
What we can report for the first time is that when Trump and his campaign were basically heralding the demise of Project 2025, behind the scenes, the former president was on the phone with Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, basically encouraging him to turn down the volume until after the election.
What was the point of that?
Because look, basically, you know, when Harris says, can you believe that they put all of this in writing?
It's 900 pages of basically conservative orthodoxy.
For the most part, some of these things that conservatives were prescribing, like abolishing the Department of Education, it's a little pie in the sky, but it's something that they've wanted for a long time.
The issue was, particularly when it came to abortion policy, Heritage, because they're a think tank like all Beltwait think tanks do, they were describing their ideal.
And when that ideal was, you know, farther to the right of what the Trump campaign was describing, that created some confusion among, I think, reporters and the public.
And then it also gave Democrats an opportunity to go on the attack.
There was some elements to this, so I want to walk through it.
There was something called a mandate for leadership as part of this.
What was that?
So, mandate for leadership is their blueprint for how they want any administration to govern.
And again, Heritage has been doing this since the Reagan administration.
Republicans often rely on some of their policy proposals in the way that any think tank puts together a white paper and hopes that they're able to put some of that into law.
Again, the difference this time is it was much more expansive.
And what Heritage was trying to do, the reason why they started this effort years ago in 2022, is they were solving for the problem of the first Trump administration, which is Donald Trump gets to town, he doesn't expect to win, and he's kind of shell-shocked.
He doesn't know which policies to necessarily pursue.
He has a general direction, certainly, but then he doesn't know who to rely on.
And so, in 2016, 2017, the former president relies on a lot of rank-and-file Republicans, and he begins with general Republican marching orders.
He feels he wasted some opportunity, and certainly conservatives feel that too.
So, with Project 2025, what these guys were trying to do is have a game plan ready to go on day one.
If you want to ask our guests questions about Project 2025, well, to what existence it might have in the next administration, 202-748-8,000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can text us at 202-748-8003.
Another element was what I just heard described a LinkedIn of sorts for people interested in working for the administration.
And this is the important part.
This is why we are focused on this.
Because, yes, you can prescribe policy, but personnel is the most significant thing in Washington, D.C.
We, you know, we all know this.
And there was concern after the back and forth between Heritage and the Trump campaign that Heritage and Project 2025, they were going to get locked out, that they were going to be blacklisted.
Howard Luttnick, the co-chair of the Trump transition team, who focuses specifically on personnel, he told me: if you have anything to do with Project 2025, you're radioactive.
I'm almost quoting him, I think, when he said there's no lock and no key for Project 2025 into the Trump administration.
And his argument was: if you send me a resume that has Project 2025 on it, you know, that's going out the window.
What we've seen, though, is this administration, they've got four or five thousand spots to fill.
These aren't just cabinet positions.
These are some of these lower-level bureaucratic positions that are going to be filled before there's a confirmation at the head of the agency.
And so, you know, transitions, they're frenetic, they're difficult things to do.
And what we've been able to report thus far is, you know, while there's still some bitterness from the campaign, you know, the Trump campaign was frustrated that Heritage didn't turn down the volume sooner.
It seems that a lot of the Trump alumni, excuse me, the Heritage alumni, and then also folks who were involved with Project 2025, they have not been given the cold shoulder to date.
In fact, some folks are already making news.
Tom Holman, for instance, he was a Heritage Fellow.
We just heard this week.
He's going to be President Trump's boarders are.
What's the history of the Heritage Foundation itself when having people placed into administrations, maybe not even the incoming one, but previous Republican administrations?
They see personnel as policy.
Their hope, and this is not distinct to them, but their hope is that if they get the right people in position, that they can move any administration in more of a conservative direction.
And don't just think about roles at the White House, but think about mid-level roles at the Environmental Protection Agency or the Office of Management and Budget.
They have found the wonks and the eggheads who understand a lot of this policy, who live for this sort of stuff, and who are prepared to reshape the government.
So Heritage over the next 100 days or so, they are going to be laser focused on doing everything they can to make certain that their people and their conservatives are in the government.
And look, this is a helpful symbiosis here.
Trump is haunted by a lot of the apathetic Republicans who didn't necessarily share his vision when he was in office the first time with the Heritage Foundation and also the assembled groups under the banner of 2025.
These are true believers.
You said that the president-elect had a conversation with the Heritage President to turn down the heat.
Could it go further than that as far as embracing some principles or at least embracing some people?
Yeah.
I know you mentioned Tom Holman, but at least others.
There are certainly others.
I would be keeping an eye on Russ Vogt, who is no longer at Heritage, but he's with the Center for American Renewal, which is one of these organizations that's under the Project 2025 umbrella.
I'd be looking at Peter Navarro, who was an author for Project 2025 and also a Trump alum.
You could really go through the Project 2025 index, and this is why the Harris campaign was taking a closer look.
A lot of these guys are alumni.
So we also have the past as a bit of a guide here.
Trump loved Heritage during his first term.
He spoke at their gala and he heralded them for his work because they were giving him a lot of policy ammunition for what it is that he wanted to get done.
This is Philip Wegman joining us.
He's with Real Clear Politics, covers the White House, and here to take your questions about this.
Let's start with Stan.
Stan in Pennsylvania, Independent Line, you're on with our guests.
Go ahead.
Yes, a lot of people don't understand what Project 2025 is.
And I think that the Democrats are using this against Donald Trump.
And the other thing I wanted to say is, you know, we've got a lot of programs on TV right now that are doing nothing but teaching hate.
We need to unify our country and get together and do the best thing for our children and our grandchildren and the future.
And we've got these shows on TV like Jimmy Kimmel and The View and all these other shows.
And all they do is teach hate against Trump.
We need to unite together and start doing what's best for our country.
Okay, Stan, we'll leave it there.
I want to go to his first part.
Excuse me, a lot of people don't understand Project 2025.
Yeah, and I actually thought that Stan's comment there was expansive but really interesting because what we saw over the summer is that Project 2025, this boring white paper, suddenly was in the cultural zeitgeist.
I don't know if Jimmy Kimmel specifically made a joke about it, but there were plenty of folks on late night who were.
It was discussed on The View.
Suddenly this got put into the mainstream and everyone was arguing about it.
Certainly, you know, it's not unusual for think tanks to do this sort of thing, but you could understand the Harris campaign's argument here and the reason why they wanted to make an issue.
To Stan's point, though, it was kind of confusing because there's not just the 900 pages of policy prescriptions.
There's also this LinkedIn style personnel database.
And so these two things taken together, they could have an oversized influence.
But this is a bit of a mixed blessing for think tank wonks everywhere because suddenly their ideas are getting attention, but it's also controversial as well.
Let's go to Leonard.
Leonard in Brooklyn, New York, Independent Line.
Hi.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, you're on.
Go ahead.
Oh, okay.
Good.
Well, I just wanted to ask Mr. Wegman about, I guess, Project 2025's viewpoint of what they're exactly detailing about the Department of Education, I guess, changes or overhaul that they are thinking about doing and what effects that would have on student loan borrowers and people who want to do like a secondary education.
Thank you.
So it's a 900-page document.
That's a lot to cover.
I would encourage anyone who has questions about the document to go read it because it's out there already.
In terms of Project 2025, they want massive changes to the Department of Education.
I think that the prescription has been to actually abolish it.
And certainly what we've seen from Republicans and conservatives is that they are no fans of the Biden administration's forgiveness for student loans.
So I would expect that any additional forgiveness to certainly end.
To what degree was there a sense that after people voted and you looked at exit polling and at the end of the day, that it really made some type of impact of how people actually decided who they were going to vote for for president?
Not at all.
I've not seen that reflected in the numbers.
This seemed like an argument that was tailor-made for someone who was already in Harris's camp, someone who was not going to be persuaded by new conservative ideas, but instead someone who was all in.
And Project 2025, it played really well over the summer.
I'm thinking back to the Democratic convention in Chicago.
You had Keenan Thompson walk on stage with this giant oversized copy of Project 2025.
And I think his joke was it was good for remaking the federal government and hurting small animals, right?
And it got a lot of laughs.
Why?
Because the Democratic faithful, they're already predisposed to dislike this sort of thing.
And if you're plugged into politics, you probably know about the Heritage Foundation.
But if you're a swing voter, if you don't have the luxury of reading the New York Times in the morning and then cross-referencing it with the Wall Street Journal, flipping between Fox and CNN, if you're a normal human being, maybe Project 2025, other than it floating around there in the cultural zeitgeist, didn't really land with you.
John, John, it's on our line for Democrats in Pennsylvania.
Hi there.
Good morning.
The Project 2025 reminds me of a line from the Great Gatsby.
They break things up and then hide in their money and let other people clean up their mess.
The Department of Education, Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, the governor, took $1.5 billion from the Department of Education in Pennsylvania.
Of course, he only was a one-term governor.
Thank God for that.
And by the way, Trump spent one-fourth of his term on a golf course in the last election.
I hope that people remember that.
You know, sometimes when he talks, he sounds like he has Tabeus Dorsalis, the third stage of syphilis.
So, okay, we're going to go on to Gilbert then.
Gilbert in Ohio, Independent Line.
Hi there.
You're next up.
Okay.
Good morning.
First of all, I would like two questions answered.
I don't know if you know the answers.
First of all, six days ago, I heard the Speaker of the House state that he's going to get rid of Social Security.
I would like to know the date of that if you happen to know.
And next, first, the Speaker said that six days ago he's going to get rid of health care in the first year.
The last question I want to ask, do you believe that the upcoming President Trump is going to give up his office after four years?
That's what I would like to know.
Thank you.
Bye.
That's Gilbert in Ohio.
Yeah.
So in terms of Social Security, Republicans have not had a very good track record of reforming that entitlement.
They've tried before and they've failed.
I don't think that Speaker Johnson, and I'm not a Capitol Hill reporter, so this is probably a question for Emily in the earlier segment, but I don't think he has plans to tackle Social Security and certainly not to end it.
There has been discussions about returning to Obamacare and Republicans taking a closer look at that.
Certainly we all know that they spent a lot of their political capital during the first four years of Trump trying to repeal and replace Obamacare, and they did not succeed, at least through the legislature.
Trump moved through executive actions.
To the last question there about whether or not Donald Trump will leave office, well, he's going to have to, right?
There's no second term.
He's constitutionally limited.
And I will say, while the fabric of the nation was really tested on January 6th, there was no scenario where these co-equal branches, the legislature and the judiciary, were going to let him stay longer.
And I think that this time around, at least the way that they are operating currently, what you see is they are trying to make the most of these next four years.
That's why the transition is moving quickly, hitting the ground running.
And I think that he knows this is his last stance.
The president and the president-elect will meet tomorrow at the White House, talk about this meeting and it's part of the transition process.
Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall in that room?
I mean, I imagine that at some point they're going to bring the press pool in, that we'll get to shout a few questions at both the president and the president-elect there in the Oval Office.
But this is a historic moment.
Trump has not been back in the Oval Office since, I believe, January 17th, 2021.
He left, and he did not participate in a lot of the transition ceremonies.
He certainly wasn't there for Inauguration Day.
And what I've been struck by in these last couple of weeks is the sudden era of good feeling.
You have Vice President Harris, who quickly concedes.
She gets on the phone to congratulate Donald Trump.
And certainly, you know, the president follows suit.
He invites Trump to the White House.
And there's a lot of talk about unity.
Let's not forget, though, this was an incredibly divisive campaign.
And while they want to talk about unity, Republicans and Democrats know, they spent the better part of a year and a half calling each other existential threats to democracy.
At some point, you had both Trump and Harris calling one another fascists.
Certainly, I think all of us want that divisive rhetoric to be set aside.
But let's not pretend that everybody's friends all of a sudden.
Philip Wegman of Real Kill Air Politics joining us.
He covers the White House.
Let's hear from Terry in Minnesota, Republican line.
Good morning.
Terry, I'd like to speak a little bit about the Department of Education.
Carter developed or, as president, ordered it in 1979.
We were first in the world in education.
Today we're 24th.
So really, what do we need it for?
Let's distribute the money to the states closer to the people with a caveat that if you decide that you want to be a social engineering education, you don't get the money.
As to the pipe dream that the last reporters had on stating, oh, there'll be all this sorts of infighting in the House and the Senate.
No, this was a mandate.
The reason there were fights in the House were because the laws that they tried to bring up were not conservative enough because they knew it wouldn't get through the Senate.
There's no longer a problem there.
And I'll tell you, too, the idea they're hoping, oh, well, you know, the senators will be able to hold up the bills there.
Not at 53, they won't.
And if they continue, if they use the filibuster too much, they'll get rid of it.
Because let's face it, if the Democrats won, it was gone.
Okay, a lot out there.
Will that Mr. Wakeman give you what he thinks?
So let's take those in turn.
First, with regards to the infighting, I think that the caller raises a really interesting point.
These are my conversations with Senate Republicans.
They are of the opinion that whoever Donald Trump puts up for confirmation to some of these cabinet positions, he is going to get.
And that's an indication of just what these guys are expecting.
Vice President Harris was right in one regard.
She said, imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.
And certainly, there's not a lot of pushback from Republicans currently.
Can you think of an anti-Trump Republican in a position of prominence in Congress right now?
No, you know, the guys like Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney, and others who were a burr in the saddle, who sort of threw a wrench in things last time around, they're not there anymore.
Donald Trump didn't retake control of the Republican Party so much as he tightened his grasp.
And with allies both in the Senate and then also in Congress, he does have a lot of political capital.
And we have already heard reporting that Susie Wiles, the incoming White House Chief of Staff, knows that they have a very tight window, which is probably the year before the coming midterms to get as much done as possible.
And then to the point about the Department of Education, I think Elon Musk and others have made this argument about how the United States was once first in education and our standards have fallen.
Certainly, you know, test scores are down.
But, you know, this type of conversation, I think it shows the chalk on the floor nature of folks who aren't traditionally involved in government, someone like Elon Musk, saying, wait a minute, we want things to change.
And there's a lot of frustration, at least among the conservative base, that there is policy, be it education or immigration or energy, that is enforced, but it doesn't seem to reflect the will of the average voter.
We've heard about the Heritage Foundation.
You've talked about there's something called the America First Policy Institute.
To what degree of influence will have in this administration, considering the name.
Yeah, absolutely.
So the America First Policy Institute, this is essentially a White House in waiting.
That was their nickname the years after the first Trump administration.
These guys didn't leave Washington, D.C.
They didn't leave the White House when Trump left.
They just moved down the street.
They're led by Brooke Rollins, who was domestic policy head in the previous administration.
And they were distinct from Project 2025.
They didn't join that endeavor, but they did something very similar, which was they got a lot of the former cabinet heads, they got a lot of former staffers, and they said, get to work.
We want you to focus on what a second Trump administration would look like.
And where Heritage was saying, look, we're ready to work with any Republican AFPI, which was staffed by Trump loyalists, they were very much looking for a second Trump term.
This is Joyce.
Joyce joins us from Seattle, Democrats line.
Hi.
Joyce from Seattle.
Hello.
Try one more time for Joyce.
Go ahead.
Okay, can you hear me now?
Yes, go ahead.
I heard on the radio, and I'm surprised that it's not on TV or the news, and this gentleman is not mentioning it either yet, that Biden has the opportunity to nominate judges, and the Senate has the, well, we know the Senate has the approval to approve the judges that he nominates.
And since it's a controlled Democratic Senate, they can do it.
Well, Trump is trying to shut down the Senate, place them in, I've forgotten the terms that they use, I would just say take him out of session until he becomes president so that he can appoint the judges.
And that Biden has that power as the current president, and the Senate has that power as the current Senate.
And I just am tired of seeing all the disruptions that are taking place.
And it's just awful.
Well, I think that Joyce raises a good question there.
She might be overstating the influence of Donald Trump in terms of the day-to-day function of the U.S. Senate, but she's absolutely correct.
You have Republicans who are saying, wait a minute, if there are federal judgeships that are open, if there are seats that have yet to be filled, we don't want Biden's nominees to be confirmed.
And so you see Senate Republicans trying to slow that down.
Of course, this is Majority Leader Schumer's prerogative.
And so he's going to be working overtime, I think, in these last 100 days or so to get as many confirmations as possible.
And you better believe that Republicans, either through blue slips or through other parliamentary wrangling, they're going to fight him.
They're going to try and keep as many of these judgeships open because one of the big opportunities for any president is to try and remake that judiciary in an either more conservative or liberal, more liberal direction.
One more call from Charlotte, North Carolina, Elisa, Independent Line.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking my phone call.
And my question is on the line of the 2025 project as it relates to the Department of Education, and they are removing the CRT, where the CRT is not taught on a elementary level, but on a collegiate level, and it's mainly there to teach the groundwork or the plight of African Americans through the passage.
Why is it that you fight so against that?
And why do you want to remove, therefore, denying FR history?
Yeah, certainly no one's putting me in charge of education policy.
That would be a bad idea.
And certainly no one else pays me for my opinions.
But I think that the caller does raise an interesting point, which is we saw a lot of animation among conservatives when it came to questions of critical race theory.
Now, if you talk to a conservative, they will say, no, a kindergartner is not actually reading Kimberly Crenshaw.
That's a collegiate level scholar.
But their argument is that critical theory is influencing U.S. education textbooks and that certainly you can see the influence that maybe a student would see in middle school or high school.
And then they're going to want to de-emphasize that.
I'm not certain what specific policy the incoming administration would have on this, but whoever Trump puts as his education secretary, they likely are not going to privilege this sort of thing.
Again, I think a lot of the individual policy and the individual curriculum is going to be decided by the states.
But these controversies that pop up and that motivate the base, now the question is, all right, politicians were able to control the passions of voters.
They were able to fundraise off of this.
They were able to motivate people to get out there and vote.
Now, what are those politicians going to do?
How are they going to govern?
One more question.
Have you heard any rumblings about who might serve as the White House press secretary or the White House communications team?
That's a question that's directly going to impact my life every day.
We're going to take a closer look at some of the folks who were interacting with reporters on the campaign trail.
Stephen Chung, Caroline Levitt.
I'm not certain if those two press secretaries are going to want to be behind the podium.
We know that Trump, though, he wants someone who is dyed in the wool, MAGA warrior here, someone who can really be aggressive, like Kaylee McEntee was.
What was interesting about her is that Sean Spicer, he came on board.
He was an old hand, very professional guy.
But like many other folks, he was new to MAGA.
There's a similar dynamic with Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
But with Kaylee, she relished the fight.
And so she didn't walk into that room in a way that a Republican press secretary in the Bush or Reagan administrations might have.
She saw this as combat with an audience of one.
And so I would expect whoever the incoming president names as his press secretary to fit that mold.
The other question, though, is, you know, are we going to have these daily briefings?
Because we've had them with the Biden administration every single day.
And that's important in an administration that doesn't leak.
But with the Trump administration, what we saw is the importance of the daily briefing was kind of lessened.
And there were, you know, long stretches when those didn't happen.
It wasn't necessarily a problem because access was great to a lot of the key decision makers.
This is Philip Wegman of Real Clear Politics.
He serves as their White House reporter.
RealClearPolitics.com is the website if you want to see his work.
Thanks for your time.
Pedro, thank you so much.
And the U.S. House has gaveled out.
They'll be back this afternoon at 4 Eastern.
Today, members are working on several pieces of legislation, including a measure to increase the transparency of mail-in ballots by requiring ballot envelopes to have tracking barcodes.
Also, legislation preventing the IRS from issuing fines and tax penalties to Americans held hostage and ending the tax-exempt status of any group supporting terrorists supporting organizations.
And later this evening, Speaker Mike Johnson will swear in two new members who won special elections last week to fill vacant seats in Texas's 18th House District for the late Houston Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and former Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher in Wisconsin's 8th District.
Live coverage when members return, right here on C-SPAN.
The House will be in order.
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