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Critics Warn RNC 'Bloodbath' a Preview of What Project 2025 Would Do If Trump Reelected
"There's already a recruitment and training program for MAGA militants underway," said one journalist focused on the issue.
Mar 12, 2024
Over 60 staffers at the Republican National Committee have reportedly been let go following the change in leadership instigated by presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, and critics warn this could be a preview of what Trump would do to the federal government should he win reelection in November.
"In a letter to some political and data staff, Sean Cairncross, the RNC's new chief operating officer, said that the new committee leadership was 'in the process of evaluating the organization and staff to ensure the building is aligned' with its vision. 'During this process, certain staff are being asked to resign and reapply for a position on the team,'" Politico reports.
2025 Project: First they came for the RNC... https://t.co/7FHBGA3Va4
— Andrea Chalupa (@AndreaChalupa) March 12, 2024
For some political observers, the purge at the RNC should serve as a preview of Project 2025, an initiative led by The Heritage Foundation and Trump allies, that would, in part, replace over 50,000 civil servants in the federal government with Trump loyalists. This would be accomplished through an executive order referred to as Schedule F that would allow Trump, if back in the White House, to fire large numbers of career government workers who currently have protected status.
Trump issued this executive order at the end of his first term, but he was not able to implement the plan before President Joe Biden took office and rescinded the order.
Trump fired 60 RNC staffers? There’s already a recruitment + training program for MAGA militants underway. See my upcoming report on the undersides of Project 2025.
— Anne Nelson (@anelsona) March 12, 2024
The idea behind Project 2025 is that Trump would be able to wield more power and face fewer obstacles to accomplishing his goals if he had a federal government stocked with loyalists.
Trump has made it clear he wants the RNC to be loyal and ideologically aligned with his agenda. Meanwhile, the right-wing effort to push forward Project 2025 as a blueprint for Trump's second term has his political opponents on high alert about a similar kind of purge—but one with much more dire consequences for the nation than a reshuffling of RNC leadership.
Having dozens of people fired after he's installed a new leader there could reflect the kind of thing he plans to do if he gets to implement Project 2025. As Axios reported last week, the Biden campaign plans intends to outline the dangers of this plan consistently throughout the general election.
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In Light of New Trump Recording, How 'Democracy Prevailed' in Michigan
"What started as the lowest moment of the post-election melee became the most inspiring," said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
Dec 22, 2023
A newly-surfaced recording of then-President Donald Trump pressuring local election officials in Michigan to halt certification of results following his 2020 defeat has prompted Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to recount how activated citizens played a pivotal role in defending the democratic will of the people during that critical moment in history.
The existence of the recording was reported Thursday by Detroit News journalist Craig Mauger, who detailed how Trump—on Nov. 17, 2020—"personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election" during a call that included the former president, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, and the GOP board members, identified as Monica Palmer and William Hartmann.
"We've got to fight for our country," Trump said to Palmer and Hartmann on the recorded call. "We can't let these people take our country away from us."
Both McDaniel and Trump assured the two local officials during the call that if they refused to sign the certification, attorneys would be provided to them. "We'll take care of that," Trump said, according to the report.
Trump's efforts to disrupt the certification in Michigan were just part of his broader scheme to subvert the election results nationwide, a scheme which culminated in the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C. for which he is now under federal indictment.
While Benson said nothing in the new revelations surprised her—telling CNN in a Thursday night interview that she and other state officials "had a gut feeling and lots of other pieces of evidence" about what was going on—it served as a reminder that if Wayne County had refused to certify it could have initiated a cascade in Michigan with reverberations around the country.
"We were prepared to go to court to successfully ensure certification at the local and state level—and we were confident we'd win in court," said Benson in a post on X, formerly Twitter. "But blocking certification in Wayne County and pushing this to the courts would still delay and create enough doubt and uncertainty to enable the Trump campaign to push Pennsylvania, which was certifying the next week, to delay as well. And we knew other dominos would fall after that."
Benson said she was not aware of the recording—which she called "quite extraordinary"—until the new reporting materialized.
In her post on X, Benson said the recording made it feel "like a good time to tell" people about how the situation played out in Michigan and why the power of the people standing their ground against anti-democratic efforts by Trump and the RNC turned the night of Nov. 17, 2020 from one of "the lowest moments" into something incredible and unforgettable.
Benson recounted feeling defeated by the outsized pressure Trump and other GOP allies were putting on the Wayne board members, but it was at that very moment, she wrote, when "something I’ll never forget happened." She wrote:
Hundreds—hundreds (!)—of citizens showed up to the meeting of the Wayne County Canvassing Board to remind them of their duty under the law to ensure their votes counted. Their voices mattered. Their votes mattered. In my view that turned the tide.
Citizens and election officials in Wayne County and statewide didn’t flinch, stood firm, and demanded their votes be certified as required under the law. And in the end, the Wayne County Canvassing board fulfilled their legal duty, followed the law and certified the election.
Potentially lost in the larger battle and chaos that engulfed the nation as Trump refused to concede his election loss, Benson recalled what happened in Wayne County, Michigan as a vital lesson.
"What started as the lowest moment of the post election melee became the most inspiring," she wrote. "The voters won. Facts and the rule of law carried the day."
In the end, she concluded, "Democracy prevailed."
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Could It Be Another Victory for Trump?
The answer is yes. The ex-president is the overwhelming favorite to win his party’s nomination. And after that, there is no certainty of what could happen.
May 30, 2023
He won in 2016. Can he win again in 2024? It doesn’t look that way. He might even be campaigning from jail –and, in that case, it’s over. Every day brings new revelations. Scandals about payoffs to porn stars, civil suits about sexual abuse, and new reports of brutish behavior should offend those white women who voted for him. Alleged violations of the Espionage Act by illegally keeping 11,000 documents upon leaving office, and obstructing an official inquiry into the matter, should enrage ethnic industrial workers known for their ostentatious patriotism. Soliciting bribes for pardons on leaving office and other forms of rampant corruption in his administration should rub those with small-town values the wrong way. Tax cuts favoring the richest .01%, resulting in the greatest upward shift of wealth in American history, should outrage populists, while Trump’s mainstreaming of bigotry should disgust all people of goodwill among his supporters.
None of this has occurred. Trump’s popular base is rock-solid. Roughly two-thirds of the Republican Party want him as their party’s nominee, and just under one-third of the overall electorate intends to vote for him. Swing voters will prove decisive, but polls don’t always tell the story. Enough mainstream voters cast their ballots for Trump but, feeling guilty or ashamed, they didn’t inform the pollsters. No less than with other fascists, establishmentarians greased the wheels for Trump’s victory in 2016, and these “moderate” Republicans remain afraid of opposing him on any issue of significance ranging from his endorsement of white supremacists to his false insistence that the 2020 election was stolen to his support for the insurrectionists of January 6, 2021.
Whether the Democratic Party can bring out its base and independent allies is the crucial question, which is complicated by institutional mechanisms benefiting Republicans and the media whose ratings soar when they cover Donald Trump.
Moderate Republican voters, especially in the suburbs, might stay home for the 2024 elections. But the opposite might also occur. They are worried about a jittery economy fueling inflation, skeptical about overspending in defense of Ukraine, distressed over identity politics, and ready to battle “woke culture.” Moreover, many also harbor a mixture of racist anxiety and xenophobic anger against Black Lives Matter and the five million immigrants that have crossed the Southern border since President Joe Biden took office in 2020.
Whether the Democratic Party can bring out its base and independent allies is the crucial question, which is complicated by institutional mechanisms benefiting Republicans and the media whose ratings soar when they cover Donald Trump. As a party supportive of capitalist elites, Republicans deliberately want to keep the vote count low and, especially at local levels, they have successfully micro-legislation that makes voting sites inaccessible, transporting voters to them more difficult, providing them with toilets more complicated, and offering water to those waiting to cast their ballots more cumbersome.
Redrawing or re-zoning districts, or what is termed “gerrymandering,” also favors Republicans in 19 states and their candidates competing for over 40% of congressional seats. Such changes also impact the electoral college, an anti-democratic vestige of America’s founding, which can play a decisive role in presidential contests. For example, Al Gore, the Democratic Party’s candidate in 2000 won a popular majority by 500,00 ballots but lost the electoral college by five votes to the Republican candidate George Bush, and Hillary Clinton in 2016 received three million more votes than Trump, yet lost the electoral college 306 to 232.
However, none of this explains the fervent loyalty that Trump is accorded by his followers. Charisma alone is also insufficient. The charismatic personality becomes charismatic only insofar as, wittingly or unwittingly, it stands for something. Trump is usually portrayed as self-interested, unprincipled, a charlatan, and a crook—and he is. Yet, the snake-oil salesman’s potion works on his intoxicated audience. Through his bully-pulpit, manipulation of the media, legislative actions, and incitement to violence, the ex-president recast the United States in the image of his followers and, in their eyes, made America great again. That was his accomplishment.
Trump reinvigorated what had become a moribund conservatism when President George Bush left office amid a failed war against terror, a devastating economic depression, and a feeling of ideological drift and depression over the election of President Barack Obama. Intent on re-fighting the American Civil War (1861-1865), and rehabilitating the “lost cause” of the slave-holding Confederacy, Trump’s bile erupted like boiling lava from a volcano. America’s most bigoted and reactionary forces which had seemingly been confined to state and local politics, now overflowed onto the national stage thus legitimizing the cultural vision of a nation dominated by white Christian men and women who are anti-secular, anti-science, and anti-intellectual. What Trump calls “patriotic education” has taught them that the United States is the incarnation of freedom and democracy, and they don’t wish to hear anything to the contrary. Inspired by dreams of a “gilded age,” when the nation belonged to them, they fear having it taken away by immigrants, people of color, feminists, and the LGBTQ community.
So far as they are concerned, Trump did what he promised and no civil suit, sex scandal, indictment, bad press, jail time, or “witch hunt” can change that. The ex-president’s bombastic worldview now defines the Republican Party. All his serious rivals for its presidential nomination are campaigning within his framework and on his terrain. They are using his issues, his disrespect for truth, his institutional racism, and his pandering to elites. They too call for de-regulating the market, “weaponizing” the state, and rebelling against the slew of cultural advances inherited from the New Left. Trump’s rivals may qualify their proposals a bit—temper their language and—but their audience is his audience. Those who reject his worldview now hover around 2% whereas those who grudgingly identify with it, as they tentatively distance themselves from him, appear as “Trump-lite”—and come up short when measured against the real thing.
It doesn’t matter to his supporters whether Trump is branded a pathological liar, a degenerate, a criminal, a puppet of business elites, or even a traitor.
The ex-president is the overwhelming favorite to win his party’s nomination. The 2016 election will likely repeat itself as Trump’s half-dozen intra-party challengers split the anti-Trump vote, thus leaving him with a plurality. Money is also flowing into Trump’s coffers from large donors, but also from everyday supporters in $5 and $10 contributions. His people don’t read the New York Times or watch CNN, PBS or NBC, and most don’t even bother with Fox News, which reaches only a tiny minority of American citizens. Bereft of education, uninterested in established media, skeptical of information, contemptuous of the state, and hoping to avoid paying taxes, Trump’s audience exists in a no-man’s land of rumors about cabals led by George Soros, warnings about the insidious deep-state by Q-Anon, threats to democracy from the New World Order, and neo-Nazi rantings about the “great replacement” of white people by people of color.
It doesn’t matter to his supporters whether Trump is branded a pathological liar, a degenerate, a criminal, a puppet of business elites, or even a traitor. Clinging to their guns, these self-styled patriots fumble with ideas and information in a post-truth society resting on what Herbert Marcuse termed “repressive tolerance.”
Calling for a dialogue with this audience is naïve. Hillary Clinton was right when she called them “deplorables.” They are deplorable for their cynicism, their use of the double standard, and their lack of goodwill. No wonder that Trump has already stated his refusal to debate opponents in the primaries. He has little to gain. Should the ex-president campaign from a jail cell, and bewail yet another “stolen” election, he might call for violent protests and perhaps even another insurrection. Like so many other fascists, he could then present himself as the savior alone capable of ending the chaos that his troops unleashed.
Trump may lose the battle of 2024, but his troops will remain, standing by and ready, when someday in the future, they can again mount the barricades. Once Trump becomes the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, events can transpire that no one can predict in advance. We saw that in 2016 – and we can only hope not to see it again.
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