TRUMP: CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM’S TROJAN HORSE
Keith Boag
Among the gnarliest questions voters face ahead of the November presidential election is how seriously to take Project 2025, the right-wing Heritage Foundation's sweeping 900 page blueprint for reconstructing America. Specifically, the question is whether it’s fair to characterize Project 2025 as Donald Trump’s not-so-hidden agenda.
The Democrats warn that’s exactly what it is.
Trump says it’s not and that he doesn’t know anything about it, hasn’t read it and doesn’t intend to — and also that he agrees with some parts of it, but not all, and besides he put out his own platform already.
Trump is still relatively new to the community of public service and not yet inclined to give much thought to what goes on in the vibrant vineyards of administrative policy development — or, as he likes to call it, “the swamp.”
But he is predictable in some ways because of the real-world experience we have gathered watching Trump develop policy when he feels the need, or the need is forced upon him, and so we have a pretty good feel for how he’ll roll in a second term.
For instance:
Not long after Trump started winning primaries in the 2016 presidential campaign, he stumbled badly over a policy question asked by then MSNBC host Chris Matthews in a pre-taped interview. Matthews asked Trump whether he believed women should face some form of punishment for having an abortion, and Trump stupidly improvised, “Yes, there has to be some form.”
There followed the inevitable “clarification" — a PR term of art for “cleanup on aisle 9” — which is remembered as one of the most audacious flip flops in modern American history. The clarification was put on the record several hours before Trump’s blunder went to air and it advised Americans to just ignore what they might later hear him say and know that he had already rethought his abortion policy and that women would not be punished for having one after all.
What was obvious then should be triple underlined in black Sharpie now: Trump screwed up the interview because he had never really given much thought to his abortion policy, and when the need for precision suddenly arose, someone had to quickly walk him through the fast-evolving details of his own thinking.
Then, as president, he more or less outsourced the abortion question to the socially conservative Federalist Society, which gave him a list of judges from which to pick the Supreme Court nominees most likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, the legal precedent that established the right to abortion. There was some lying required at Senate confirmation hearings, but they got through it and, sure enough, three new justices later, the Supreme Court did exactly what the Federalist Society expected of them and tossed Roe into the ash bin of history.
Trump’s latest abortion position is to outsource the policy again and leave the state legislatures to figure it all out for themselves.
This is the correct context for deciding how much importance to give to Project 2025: The Federalist Society captured Trump, The Heritage Foundation intends to do the same.
When Trump says he agrees with some of Project 2025, it’s quite likely he means, for example, that the White House should have direct control over the Department of Justice, as Project 2025 recommends, because that conforms with Trump’s long held belief that investigations and prosecutions should be made subject to his presidential authority.
Similarly, the new simplified tax structure outlined in Project 2025 — two brackets, 15% and 30% — reduces taxes on the wealthiest and aligns perfectly with Trump’s self-interest. So he’d check that box too.
But Project 2025 is a trove of policy ideas that Trump has never thought about and that stretch far beyond the horizon of things that interest him enough to fire his imagination. Many of them are inspired by evangelical Christian ideas about the family; dissatisfaction with LGBTQ freedoms and protections; what’s taught in schools and what isn’t; and the inconvenient separation of church and state.
The project also imagines a civil service bureaucracy that endorses the beliefs of its political leadership. In essence it wants to replace what it complains is a Washington Deep State, with a Trump Deep State manipulated by the ideologues at The Heritage Foundation.
The architects of Project 2025 are the kinds of people who have reason to believe the first Trump administration was a stunning success. They got from it things they’d only ever dreamed of until then: A hard right Supreme Court to turn back the clock on liberalism and promote their values; climate change skepticism and oil drilling enthusiasm in the Oval Office; and, maybe most of all, a mid-twentieth century expression of American identity that is as long on sentimentality as it is short on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion.
Now they see Trump as their Trojan Horse. They expect to roll into The Oval Office with him, to be on his speed dial and in his ear. And they expect to guide the evolution of his thinking about Project 2025, so that the things that are important to them become important to him too.
They intend to engineer in him the change they wish to see in America.
. . .
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Keith Boag - The US presidential ticket is set: Trump + Vance versus Harris + Waltz. And to cover that election, we're bringing our readers and listeners a brilliant journalistic mind and political correspondent legend, Keith Boag! Keith was with the CBC for more than 30 years, including as Chief Political Correspondent. His career included work for many years in Washington, D.C., and as Ottawa Bureau Chief. Keith covered seven federal elections in Canada, ten party leadership campaigns, as well as several US elections. Keith will regularly offer his written analysis via "QUOTES" at Air Quotes Media.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Air Quotes Media. Read more opinion contributions via QUOTES from Air Quotes Media.