Project 2025: Building a "Better" Trump Administration

As listeners might have noticed, 2024 is a presidential election year, and already the prospect of Donald Trump returning to power is looming over the campaign and the media's coverage of it. In a second term, Trump has promised to weaponize the Justice Department to punish his enemies, deconstruct major portions of the administrative state, and mobilize the largest deportation force in US history — to cleanse the nation of immigrants who, as Trump says , "are poisoning the blood of our country." The key to achieving these goals, conservatives believe, is ensuring that this time — unlike in 2016 — Trump is surrounded by the right people: populist true-believers who are sufficiently loyal and sufficiently competent to implement his extreme agenda. "Personnel is policy" is the watchword. And think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) are busy building rival rosters of ideologically-vetted political appointees. (And pissing each other off in the process.) This episode explores how movement conservatives are refashioning the "conservative pipeline" for an anti-establishment era — through their efforts to recruit, credential, and train politic…