Top Project 2025 architect talks conservative blueprint for Trump second term

Led by the

conservative

think tank, the Heritage Foundation has spent years crafting a more than 900-page presidential transition plan that gives Trump's team a detailed plan for a potential

second

term

. That plan would radically remake the federal government if executed with its stated goal of being summoned to meet. an army of

conservative

s aligned, vetted, trained and prepared to get to work from day one to deconstruct the administrative state the

project

is based on four pillars that go far beyond previous transition efforts there is the political agenda Staff training and a 180-day manual to execute the Think Tank plans many authors of the plan are former Trump officials joining us now one of the

architect

s of the

2025

project

the president of the Heritage Foundation Dr.

Kevin Roberts good morning sir good morning Dr. Roberts thank you for joining us and coming I know people are like Everybody has the

architect

of

2025

, yeah, because everybody's been talking about it and we saw an interview that they did with the Associated Press and we've been reading some things and I think we just want start with anchoring. Um, in anchoring this conversation on you told the New York Times that this plan is a plan that you know is for anyone, it's not just for Donald Trump, you would like to see President Biden implement part of it, but you don't think that that's going to happen. happen and then you reject the claim that this is a plan that was put together specifically for the

second

coming of the Trump Administration.

I appreciate that question because as your lobby shows, when you come in, you have the word honesty and the accuracy of the word, that's an honest and accurate description and, first of all, I appreciate that the Heritage Foundation couldn't do that because we're not partisans, we cannot be tied to a single candidate, secondly, we have offered a briefing on the 2025 project dating back to the last year to all the presidential candidates, including President Biden, honestly, I would have loved for the President Biden and his team would have asked for a briefing. We understand that we have differences of opinion on almost everything, but at Heritage we believe in telling the truth with a smile on our face, but the last point I must make is that now that President Trump is the nominee and President Biden has not received a briefing on project 2025, President Trump is going to make policy decisions in his administration if he wins project 2025 is something that is going to transcend the next four years the next 10 years it is really for the first time in the history of the conservative movement the policy and personnel apparatus that's the most important thing to remember I have a follow up it's just that you said that um this plan is about instituting uh institutionalizing Trumpism so because I know all of you too, not just the president of the Heritage Foundation , they are also president of Action Heritage, which is the political action committee, so whether it is linked to Trump or not.

The context of that comment to the New York Times was that the Heritage Foundation's job was to institutionalize Trumpism as a new version of conservatism, a conservatism that recognizes that, by all objective measures, the United States is weaker in 2024 than it was in 1984. I think that's reversible because of the way we're ultimately optimistic and by institutionalizing Trumpism, what we're saying is that even though we're known as the Ronald Reagan Think Tank, I'm a child of the Reagan Revolution. I'm very proud of that, that was 40 years ago and we need to understand what time it is in America and right now Donald Trump, whether anyone likes it or not.

I happen to like that he is the conservative standard bearer. Well, Michael, what time is it? Okay, yes. I don't think it's time for Trumpism in that sense because it's one of the things that, as a lifelong Heritage supporter and participant, having spoken at various times there, in the roles I've played in the party, I see this. like a dramatic departure from those Reagan has been identified as the problem and that is, 50,000 federal employees um axio cited uh note noted cite massive headhunt Quest aims to recruit 20,000 people to serve in the next Administration as a down payment for 4,000 presidential appointments plus possible replacements for like there are as many as 50,000 federal workers that are policy adjacent, as the Trumps say, policy adjacent to what I mean, you're talking about people who have been in the federal government, my dad was a federal government employee, so I would be very horrified to think that it could be on someone's chopping block because they think it's part of some deep state effort, um uh, how to talk to us about what that would look like if Heritage is calling for 50,000 federal employees to be laid off, who are you replacing them with the number and where do they come from?

I mean even if it's not 50,000 if it's 10,000 if it's 2,000 where do they come from and who do you replace them with because I suspect that many of those people that you're talking about have been in federal service for a long time and have served not only in Republican administrations but also in Democratic administrations, etc., have done it and 95% of those who give political contributions give them to the Democratic party, but that is rejecting, you are going to fire someone because they wrote a check to a Democrat. candidate, we are not going to fire someone and the number has to be more than 50,000 taking into account that there are more than 2 million federal employees because during the last century the radical left has seen the administrative State as the fourth branch of government, they are bureaucrats, not elected nothing against your father, obviously, you know that from me at Heritage But ultimately, we have to transfer power from the Imperial City of D because he wrote a check to a Democratic candidate without any appreciation or understanding of where there was his politics. all Allegiance orally reform the agencies that take their jobs, why does that matter?

They are doing their job with respect to a mission that is misaligned, for example, the US Department of Education, fortunately, President Trump deserves credit for saying that he wants to end the Department of Education, that means that employees of that agency, even if they have been fulfilling that mission with great competence, they will have to look for another job. What's more important than that, Michael, is that we actually have an education delivery mechanism in this country that reflects the 21st century. So at Heritage we look at this in a very different way: you want to look at it from the lens of unelected bureaucrats, most of whom are not your father, I assume, who want to say that they are more important than the average American from the that we want to see it. the point of view of the average American and say it's time for them to be put in the driver's seat instead of unelected bureaucrats, yes, but they're not going to be in the driver's seat because they're not going to get the jobs done. that you do. the people you are identifying who are aligned with Trump are the ones who are going to come, you are making the case that those people are incompetent and I can tell you by looking at resume 11,000 as much as you are thinking I am making.

These people are incompetent, you are arguing that they are somehow executing a nefarious agenda. Some of them are: Why does the Environmental Protection Agency have 3? If I could chime in, because I actually did it for the federal government. I work with several, just like the The president and I work with several of those civilians who we call officials of the United States government, people who are not political appointees and have the institutional knowledge, acted in that way. I think Alicia has a question along those lines about one of the political priorities that you all have identified in Project 2025.

In fact, Dr. Robert has a question about these upcoming elections: is your organization going to accept the results of the elections? 2024 presidential election? I think Dr. Roberts can't listen, so Alicia just asked him: Will your organization accept the results of the 2024 election regardless of the outcome? Yes, if there is no massive fraud like in 2020, what does that mean there is no massive fraud? Do you think there wasn't massive fraud there? It was massive fraud, we have a database of voter fraud that has documented it for years, by the way, the Heritage Foundation has been concerned about election integrity for decades, not just the year 2020, we have been documenting this issue for a long time. time and if the of I think, according to the Heritage Foundation, sir, by your count, the Heritage Foundation has done research and, by their count, there have been 1,513 proven cases of Crow ac voters throughout the United States since 1982, yes, That's because they are very difficult. to document and the Democratic Party is very good at fraud, the key thing here that I think we would both agree on is that we at the Heritage Foundation aspire to see a poll after this election in which all Americans believe that their vote was counted.

I care so much about someone on the political left who I disagree with saying they have confidence in the outcome of the election, it seems that instead of turning this into a partisan conversation, something they do a good job of doing on MSNBC, We could say that we aspire to something nobler, which is that every American believes in his or her vote. I mean, I don't think it's partisan to ask whether you'll accept the election results. Alisia I don't know if you can listen to Alisia now. You have other? I can hear. I have another. The question that interests me specifically is how Dr.

Roberts relates to the deportation of immigrants in this country, I just understand how it's going to work when we talk about people on the inside, how he sees a future Administration that uses the National Guard ICE. police forces to deport something like 11 million people, would you listen? So she asks about immigration and how you see immigration, how, in this plan, how you talk about using the National Guard to deport people like, what's the Alis and tell me? If I'm in the interior specifically in the interior specifically not in the people of the border, people inside this country, first of all we need to close the border and second of all we need to have the largest mass deportation system ever seen in the history of the United States United because it is unfair, illegal and evil that over 10 million illegal aliens have come to this country.

It is imperative that we send those people back. Invite them back through the legal system. At Heritage we love immigrants, but we also love the rule of law. Then how? Do you plan to pull that off well? Are you talking about going to the door too because that's what I mean? I was able to read the plan, but I think the first thing is that there will be a lot of self-deportation. The interesting thing, certainly, What I know is that just talking about this and starting to implement a plan and President Trump deserves a lot of credit for talking about this makes people say, "I don't want to risk being arrested for doing something." illegal," but secondly, there are big plans to use the Department of Homeland Security to return these people south of the border.

The good thing is that even a majority of people on the political left agree with this because they see the damage this has caused. Just before we leave. I think we want to take a couple more minutes, so I know they're telling us to rap, but we want to take a few more minutes. I'll stay as long as you ask me real quick, so what do these people do? What do they do? doing now what people the people the 11 million 20 million whatever you want to deport many of them are committing crimes like murdering a 12 year old girl in Houston uh in fact, it worries one in 11 million a lot, what can we ?

Take the remaining time of the segment and I can tell you a lot: undocumented immigrants were 37.1% less likely to be convicted of a crime than undocumented immigrants and, according to a survey, a study from the University of California, Riverside, the 33% of the survivors say that to the survivors of the young woman murdered in I'm just giving you the numbers, well, what does it say to the parents of those people, those young women who were murdered? This is the preponderance of these people, but what is the difference between an illegal immigrant who unfortunately engages in that activity and we don't like that, I want to be clear that we do not have illegals indict undocumented individuals versus anyone else who commit the same crime.

I mean, what you're saying is because you have this case of individuals behaving badly that's a reflection of every individual in that community and that's just not the case, what happens is that because of the preponderance, what percentage of Are those people the 11 million you want? I just want to clarify my question. That's what I'm trying to do: what percentage of those people you want to get rid of areWhen they move from the country, do they actually commit crimes? Our analysis in Texas, Georgia, New York shows that a preponderance of illegals that have come in, I don't know.

Do you know what that number is? They are single men and there are single men and the disproportionate number of them are people who are not even making any attempt to be legal. What is that number 10 out of a thousand? Or are you talking? You know, I'm just trying. to get up I would just say um and if Alicia was sitting here and you could hear her, she would say that you are setting up a horrible murder to smear 11 million people, that is a ridiculous statement, what Joe Biden is doing is setting up everyone. rule before we let him go Dr.

Roberts, I want to ask you about abortion, um, because it's an issue that, you know, is on the minds of people all over this country right now waiting for a Supreme Court case. M tala um in Louisiana, um and places across the country, uh, abortion care is not available. to people who may need it, you and the organization in this plan talk about changing the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Life. Do you think women in the United States should be able to have an abortion if that's what their doctor recommends? says that they need abortion is not Health I find it really interesting if not worse that you would not support changing the name of the department to the Department of Life I thought that we were all in favor of life we ​​imminently believe in women's rights and particularly the rights of women in the womb and therefore the real question they should be asking.

I just want to talk about the people who support the legislation that abortion can occur up to 3 days after the person is born. This is an absurd framing by this network which is an absurd statement as a person with a real woman, I tell you, does that happen? Lawmakers in California, the virgin of New York, who make Heritage and the 2025 project, believe that a woman should be able to have an abortion if her doctor says she needs one. it's a yes or no question, abortion is not healthcare, abortion is the murder of a human being, okay, I don't completely agree with Dr.

Kevin Roberts, but I'm so glad he was here and we are so disappointed that I couldn't hear Alisa. That means she has to come back Dr. Roberts, she has to come back, okay, thanks for having me.