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Leaving aside the merits of the issue for a moment, this is totally Project 2025 right? They are clearly implementing some sort of plan for steamrolling the federal bureaucracy, the implementation of which looks suspiciously similar to what is outlined in this particular 922-page PDF.
I guess I’m wondering, are there any interpretations of why Trump tried so hard to distance himself from Project 2025 during the campaign other than the maximally-cynical one? All I can come up with is that there are a whole lot of names on that document that aren’t his, and Trump doesn’t want them taking credit for his glorious presidency.
I believed Trump truthfully repeatedly stated that he hasn't read it and is not familiar with the details.
And also you notice he is directionally aligned with portions of it. No contradiction here.
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I don't really get this critique. You're seriously looking at the 922 page long wish list of a major republican thinktank, noticing that a lot of elements of that wish list are being implemented by a republican president and deciding that the parsimonious explanation is that Trump is just following the checklist? It can't be that a Republican president has a lot in common with a Republican think tank?
The reason that people tried to say that project 2025 was the Trump plan was because, in addition to the stuff that is popular enough for Trump to want to run with, it includes stuff not popular enough for Trump to run with. It's like if Kamala won and implemented some passport support for trans people that also happened to be on NAMBLA's "let trans-aged people attend highschool and sleep with children" 2025 agenda and thus it was right to tar her with every policy on the document this whole time.
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Well there is also the fact that it was used as a bogeyman in the media, and since no voter is actually going to read something called "Project 2025" but it has kind of an ominous name, its easy to manipulate it into sounding scary.
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Because it was a plan created by a group of non-Trump Republicans and contained elements that he disagreed with, some of which were mined for political attacks by those claiming it was his plan. That doesn't mean that he disagrees with everything in it - both Trump and the authors are Republicans, so naturally they have overlap in policy. Nor does it mean that Trump considers people radioactive and unhireable for contributing to it, once again they are Republicans and agree on many things. It just means that people quoting from it as "Trump's plan" were being dishonest, an honest critic could have either quoted Agenda 47 instead or made predictions about his actions without claiming they were from Trump's published plan. I don't think this is ordinarily a concept people have difficulty with, activist groups and think-tanks publish proposals that have partial overlap with politician's actual plans all the time.
I'm guessing the very fact that it wasn't his plan contributed to the focus on it. For anything in Agenda 47 he could just say "yeah that's my plan, it's great!". Whereas the fact that Project 2025 wasn't actually his plan meant that he denied it, which looks weaker and like he has something to hide.
The people running project 2025 (Paul Dans, Russel Vought, John McEntee) had held prominent positions in the first Trump administration, and expected to have prominent positions in a second Trump administration.
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Project 2025 also contains a lot of things that Trump, most Republicans, and virtually all Democrats would disagree with -- I recall there being a lot of debate over a passage in it that called for restrictions on condoms, for instance. It was far more radical than Trump and most Trump supporters, and so tarring him with it was a way to label him extreme. These were fertile areas of attack, which were hard to resist for the Biden/Harris campaign.
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The maximally cynical one seems like the most parsimonious.
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I don’t think there is an interpretation that isn’t the “maximumally cynical one”. He said multiple times he was not involved with Project 2025, and then signed bills directly from the authors of it. I struggle to imaginr a reasonable interpretation isn’t that he’s a populist who will say anything in the moment to make you like him. I believe when you stop looking at the motivation involving actually being beneficial to America and instead being beneficial to billionaires and foreign agents (China, Russia) the answer to "why do these policy decisions" becomes pretty obvious.
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It also appears in Agenda 47, which is what he said he WAS implementing.
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In the same way Trump was forced to hire from the existing GOP blob for his first administration (because those were the people the right had ready to move to D.C.), staffers in the new administration will almost by default be closely aligned with the Heritage foundation and therefore with project 2025, whether he wants it or not.
Personally Trump cares primarily about tariffs, which are his baby and his political fascination for 40+ years. The other stuff he can take or leave, although he’s personally relatively socially liberal, areligious and doesn’t have a huge issue with gays, abortion or trans people compared to many on the right.
I'm pretty sure he understand the federally funded NGO ecosystem providing activists and sinecures for the left needs to go. It was a purely political decision that it ever came into being and its existence proves that GOP was fake opposition.
They should've been fighting it tooth and nail, yet it's there.
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I agree he doesn't personally have much investment in the issues surrounding gay people, abortion and trans people, but he's happy to throw the right a bone on these issues, and if he's doing that it really doesn't make a difference what he personally believes.
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Wasn’t the Heritage Foundation part of the existing GOP blob in 2017? The difference between 2017 and 2025 is that conservative think tanks have had four to eight years to go over all of the failures of the first Trump administration and figure out how to do it right the next time. What they came up with was Project 2025.
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Can you refer us to a specific part of the 922 page pdf that outlines the plan, and/or this step in the plan?
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To be clear, is the maximumally-cynical interpretation "reduced attack surface during a national election"? Because that's the obviously-correct answer to me.
It’s also the most obviously correct strategy.
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