On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone describes how Project 2025 laid the groundwork for Trump to install right-wing media loyalists into “senior level positions”
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From the April 29, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): It is interesting to me, Angelo, that there are two things happening here, right? They're both seeing these people who have expertise and knowledge, and it does not seem that this is predicated on a lack of merit. They are showing them the exit. But then there's piece two, which is who they intend to replace them with, right? If fealty to the president becomes the highest possible caliber of employee, what then happens to the federal government? What if there are no guardrails, but also if just everybody who's there is taking their orders and marching with them?
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): That's it. I mean, you just said it. You know, that was one of the big -- that was sort of the rationalizations that a lot of people were making when they voted for Trump. And they said, "Well, it wasn't so bad the first time." And people said, "Well, you know, that's because there were guardrails. Now they're not going to be any guardrails." That's it.
They're not just eliminating the guardrails. One of the reasons why this is different now is that they're getting rid of the parts of the government that are focused on actually just executing the responsibilities of the office or the department or the agency that they work for, and instead either gutting it entirely, so it's just a hollow shell, in which case it's not performing, or alternatively, or in addition to, adding in their loyalists.
And that's the thing about Project 2025. It all does sort of come back to there. There really was a plan. It wasn't just an aspirational policy book with granular detail that said, "Well, make sure that in your first 100 days, you eliminate the office of immigration detention ombudsman." Literally, it's that granular. It's that precise. It isn't just a book that lays out all of their policy prescriptions, some by the way, they did do that.
It isn't just a 180-day agenda. And I think that's important of pre-written, pre-ready to go executive orders. Their measurement is not 100 days. Their first benchmark is actually 180 days, which I think is revealing because it shows that that's what they thought was the timeline they needed to really complete or at least get through a substantial portion of this change-making apparatus. But the third part of Project 2025 was exactly what you just referenced was a personnel database of pre-vetted individuals that are measured almost entirely by their fealty and loyalty to Trump or Trumpism.
And I think in the first wave of high-level appointees, I don't think it's a coincidence that more than 20 Fox News figures are in the administration in senior level positions. And if you expand that out to larger right-wing media figures in high level positions, like at the deputy director level at the FBI and all across the board, those are the people that demonstrated their fealty and loyalty to Trump the most. It was so visible they got these high profile positions. But there were lots of other people just like the Dan Bonginos or the Pete Hegseths who don't have those principal roles and titles, but are going to be filling the exact positions that you referenced after they booted out the people that have been doing that work for so many years.