I do believe he doesn’t know — or care — about many of the policies in that document. He has a very narrow focus on trade, immigration and fucking over his enemies and rewarding his friends. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t perfectly find with his henchmen carrying out the rest of it. He only cares about himself and since he won’t be running again (whether because he observes the constitution or repeals it) anything they want to do is fine with him.
The folks who want to abolish the Department of Education paid for a giant billboard and misspelled the word “dementia.” Enjoy your weekend, everyone. pic.twitter.com/wRKliVffFF
— Scott Charles, MAPP, FCPP (@TheScottCharles) July 6, 2024
I don’t even know if that’s real, but I do know that it could be.
Captured in the wild this morning in Asheville, NC.
As David Roberts (Dr. Volts) stated plainly on Friday, “This election is not a choice between two individuals, it’s a choice between worldviews, between futures. Do we want to continue down the path to multiethnic democracy or do we want to impose a white patriarchal Christian autocracy?”
While Democratic Party elites tear their hair out over Joe Biden’s debate performance and pretty uneventful interview with George Stephanopoulos broadcast Friday night, the Biden-Harris comms team is hammering Donald Trump on social media over Project 2025. (See below.)
Why and why now? Because Trump is doing his best Sgt. Schultz and running away from Project 2025. Don’t you let him.
Project 2025, the published 900-page plan for turning America into a fascist theocracy, is drawing more negative attention than, in their hubris, the Heritage Foundation and its Christian nationalist partners may have anticipated.
What is Trump’s internal polling showing him about ublic reaction?
Look, it’s been a tough week. As a famous movie cop once said, right now you’ve gotta ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?”
No? Then here are some articles for you to spread around and some social media posts to re-whatever. It’s a fine Saturday here and your local Democratic candidates would love to have your help stopping fascism.
So here are just a few @BidenHQ tweets from Friday tying Project 2025 around Trump’s neck like an albatross. You’ll also find them at bidenharrishq on Threads. No reason you cannot also repost them to Bluesky, Mastodon and Facebook.
Trump just desperately tried to claim he knows “nothing” about Project 2025.
FACT CHECK:
—His Super PAC is running ads promoting Project 2025, calling it “Trump’s Project 2025” —His top aide and former bag boy John McEntee is the guy behind Project 2025 —His press secretary is… pic.twitter.com/O3Dqey07UT
Here is Trump Senior Advisor and former appointee John McEntee, who helped draft Project 2025, explaining to Steve Bannon last July how Trump plans to implement the plan immediately after taking office. But Trump doesn’t know these people or anything about it. pic.twitter.com/XR9X2IbFAk
A desperate and lying Trump claims he knows “nothing” about his Project 2025 agenda, even though his top aides are the ones behind the plan pic.twitter.com/KLzNaU8Owl
Chair @BenWikler: If you don't know about Project 2025, look it up. Trump is thinking about how to rip away more freedoms. Donald Trump is dreaming about unchecked power pic.twitter.com/lg3rct0IqS
The press is doing to Biden what it did to Hillary Clinton in 2016, as Roberts explained yesterday. Don’t sit around feeling victimized by it. Get busy.
A-a-a-a-nd. If you are still not convinced just where the Trump-Heritage Christian nationalist movement means to take this country — do to you — in 2025, Robert Reich offers a few details, But even those don’t convey just how insane this movement is.
This Republican is running for governor in North Carolina: “Some folks need killing. It’s time for somebody to say it… It’s a matter of necessity”
Mark Robinson, GOP candidate for North Carolina Governor: “Some folks need killing. It's time for somebody to say it… It's a matter of necessity” pic.twitter.com/QvXuJczQ9P
This is not hyperbole, rather documentable facts. Coming elections are an existential threat to America, unless you vote against Republicans. Professor Snyder speaks not as a partisan rather historian of autocracies. There are no good autocracies. They work only for autocrats. pic.twitter.com/7Fbaq9szRm
The spectacle of Democrats, hair afire, publicly second-guessing themselves to the nth degree over whether Joe Biden’s candidacy might demotivate voters is demotivating to me.I don’t want to vote for us when we act like this, and I’m a convention delegate. I wrote the other day that I haven’t heard this much magical thinking from the left since the last New Age convention I covered.
Demotivational poster
This thread by David Roberts, a.k.a. Dr. Volts, expresses a lot of that same frustration:
I haven’t written much about politics since the debate, mainly because I’m so overwhelmed by disgust & contempt toward this country’s media & commentariat that it has rendered me inarticulate with rage. Twitter probably doesn’t need more rage. I do just wanna make one point tho.
To be clear up front: I don’t give one tiny hot fuck who the Dem nominee is. I truly don’t. Biden’s fine. Harris is fine. A warm puddle of vomit is fine. *There is no conceivable resolution to the nomination fight that could change the basic calculus of this race.*
Preventing a fascist takeover of the US is my top priority–as a journalist, as a voter, as a human. If it isn’t yours too, you should feel bad about yourself. If you haven’t made the stakes of this election clear to everyone within the sound of your voice, you should feel bad.
But I’m not gonna rant. [breathes deeply] Just gonna make my one point, which is this: the idea that that the process of jettisoning Biden & choosing someone else will go well — will be *allowed* to go well — is a deeply deranged fantasy.
The idea that Dems will do this & will end up feeling unified, that Harris will come out popular, that “the dynamics of the race will shift,” all of that … fucking deranged. Deranged in such a perfectly characteristic Dem way.
“This person/policy/slogan/approach has been irredeemably slimed by Republicans & a hostile media — let’s throw it overboard!” That’s the Dem way. Always with this starry-eyed hope that they can reset, start over, get it right this time.
Just as one example — other people have aggregated these — there have been “calls” for every Dem nominee of the last 30 years to step aside. Dems practically delight in abandoning their own people, policies, & principles in response to bad-faith pressure. They f’ing love it.
But, as I’ve been saying for, oh, 20 years now, the situation is structural. The current situation is an outcome of a particular incentive structure & that structure will remain exactly the same if Harris takes over the ticket.
For centrists, journalists, pundits, *even Dem electeds*, the way you prove you are a Reasonable, Serious Person in DC is by shitting on Dems. For the left, the way you prove you are a true radical is by shitting on Dems. For the right … well, obviously.
Everyone’s professional incentives are to shit on Dems. Dwelling on Trump & his fascist movement — however justified by the objective facts — just doesn’t bring that juice, doesn’t get the clicks & the high-fives, doesn’t feel brave & iconoclastic. It’s just … no fun.
So, say Biden stepped aside in favor of Harris tomorrow. How long until the vapid gossips we call political reporters find something wrong with her, some alleged flaw they just have to write 192 stories about? How long until the hopped-up mediocrities we call pundits …
…find some “counter-intuitive” reason that the new Dem ticket is flawed after all? How long until the irredentist left gets over the temporary thrill of its new Harris memes & remembers that she’s a cop & turns on her? How long before the ambient racism & misogyny in the US…
I already have a tee shirt design: Cop Or Criminal? | Choose Wisely
… lead center-leftists to conclude that, sure, they’d support a black woman, just not *this* black woman? In other words: how long before everyone reverts to their comfortable, familiar identity & narratives?
(Behind the scenes here at Hullabaloo, we predicted the appearance of “but not this Black woman” a week ago.)
Bolding below mine.
About 30 f’ing seconds, is my guess.
Dems uniting, feeling good, telling a clear story, receiving credit for their accomplishments–all of that is *impossible* in the current environment. It won’t be allowed. Dems can punch themselves in the face all they want, abandon whoever they want, apologize all they want…
… they simply will not be allowed to turn the page & start fresh, because everyone’s incentives remain the same. If they did that, elites, including media elites, would have no choice but to openly & frankly grapple with Trump & what he represents & they *don’t want to*.
Everyone feels comfortable shitting on Dems — it’s just a cozy professional space. You get to feel brave & independent (just like all the replacement-level pundits around you) with zero risk.
Yes, it’s abysmal, contemptible cowardice on a genuinely embarrassing scale …
… but it is what it is & we should have no illusions that it will change with a change in the top of the ticket.
As @whstancil has been trying to tell you people (good god how he tries), the information environment is thoroughly corrupted.
For some reason, left pundits are pathologically averse to acknowledging that fact. And so they grasp at these straws — if we could just get rid of Biden, we could have a reasonable conversation! Yeah, sure. You absurd summer children.
This election is not a choice between two individuals, it’s a choice between worldviews, between futures. Do we want to continue down the path to multiethnic democracy or do we want to impose a white patriarchal Christian autocracy?
At stake is the entire federal civil service. The machinery of state built since WWII. Freedom & dignity for millions. Yes, democracy itself. That’s not an exaggeration. Yet this country’s elites have utterly failed to convey those stakes to the populace. A *grotesque* failure.
You can not look at this extraordinary media freakout this last week and not psychologize, not see all kinds of displacement. They can’t or won’t be serious about Trump & so they are fucking *giddy* at having permission to scold Dems again. Their safe place.
Anyway, my point is just: none of this will change if Harris replaces Biden at the top of the ticket. The idea that the media — with these soulless careerist court gossips in charge — will allow it is just fantasy. They *need* Dems in disarray & so they will engineer it.
The US is right on the precipice of falling into bona fide fascism & *the vast majority of the voting public doesn’t even know it*. That speaks to a deeply diseased information environment. Until Dems do something about that, all their self-flagellation will buy them nothing.
Addendum: you can see it starting already. They're probing, pushing, seeing what gets bites. Will this (utter horseshit about a coverup) be the "but her emails" for Harris? Who knows. What's certain is: they'll find something.https://t.co/CArr27OrXt
If you do nothing else today, stop obsessing about Biden losing and start busting your ass to save this your own life. Be the hero of your own story for a change. Tell your neighbors about Project 2025. Warn everyone that the same people who stormed the Capitol on January 6 have drafted plans for a fascist takeover of the United States NEXT YEAR if Trump wins.
Find your local Democratic headquarters and ask how you can help. Knock some doors. Flood social media. If you’re on Twitter, retweet Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ). They’ve got a full-court press going to call out Trump’s involvement with Project 2025. He’s trying to run away from it. They’re doing the same on Threads. Spread the news.
Not even for a minute! Not even with the car running and air conditioner on. On a warm day, temperatures inside a vehicle can rise rapidly to dangerous levels. On an 85-degree day, for example, the temperature inside a car with the windows opened slightly can reach 102 degrees within 10 minutes. After 30 minutes, the temperature will reach 120 degrees. Your pet may suffer irreversible organ damage or die. Learn how to help a pet left inside a hot car by taking action or calling for help. Local law enforcement can follow this handy guide [PDF] on how to proceed.
Print our hot car flyer and spread the lifesaving word. Download the PDF
Watch the humidity
“High humidity amplifies the negative impact of high temperature on your pet—and in combination, these factors magnify the danger zone,” says Dr. Barbara Hodges, DVM, MBA, of the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association. “When animals pant, moisture from their lungs evaporates and helps reduce their body heat. But high humidity conditions hamper that process and their ability to cool themselves, and their body temperature can skyrocket—rapidly—to dangerous, or even lethal, levels.”
Taking a dog’s temperature will quickly tell you if there is a serious problem. Dogs’ temperatures should not reach over 104 degrees. If your dog’s temperature does, follow the instructions below for treating heat stroke.
Take care when exercising your pet. Adjust intensity and duration of exercise in accordance with the temperature. On very hot days, limit exercise to early morning or evening hours, and be especially careful with pets with white-colored ears, who are more susceptible to skin cancer, and short-nosed pets, who typically have difficulty breathing. Asphalt gets very hot and can burn your pet’s paws, so walk your dog on the grass if possible. Always carry water with you to keep your dog from dehydrating.
Don’t rely on a fan
Pets respond differently to heat than humans do. (Dogs, for instance, sweat primarily through their feet.) And fans don’t cool off pets as effectively as they do people.
Provide ample shade and water
Any time your pet is outside, make sure they have protection from heat and sun and plenty of fresh, cold water. In heat waves, add ice to water when possible. Tree shade and tarps are ideal because they don’t obstruct air flow. A doghouse does not provide relief from heat—in fact, it makes it worse.
Cool your pet inside and out
Whip up a batch of quick and easy DIY pupsicles for dogs. And always provide water, whether your pets are inside or out with you.
Keep your pet from overheating indoors or out with a cooling body wrap, vest or mat. Soak these products in cool water, and they’ll stay cool (but usually dry) for up to three days. If your dog doesn’t find baths stressful, see if they enjoy a cooling soak.
Watch for signs of heatstroke
Extreme temperatures can cause heatstroke. Some signs of heatstroke are heavy panting, glazed eyes, a rapid heartbeat, difficulty breathing, excessive thirst, lethargy, fever, dizziness, lack of coordination, profuse salivation, vomiting, a deep red or purple tongue, seizure and unconsciousness.
Animals are at particular risk for heat stroke if they are very old, very young, overweight, not conditioned to prolonged exercise, or have heart or respiratory disease. Some breeds of dogs—like boxers, pugs, shih tzus and other dogs and cats with short muzzles—will have a much harder time breathing in extreme heat.
How to treat a pet suffering from heatstroke
Move your pet into the shade or an air-conditioned area. Apply ice packs or cold towels to their head, neck and chest or run cool (not cold) water over them. Let them drink small amounts of cool water or lick ice cubes. Take them directly to a veterinarian.
Even setting aside his grotesque character, flagrant criminality and rank stupidity, Trump’s mind is also slipping precipitously. And that combination is a thousand times worse than Biden could ever do. It would be nice if the media could keep some perspective on all this. But since Trump is impervious to criticism because he’s a sociopath, they’ve decided to turn their ire on Biden instead. It’s so much more pleasant to have the right patting you on the back than issuing death threats.
–@jrpsaki plays montage of Trump’s recent glitches and confusion: I don't even know what the last one said. You'd rather that guy have access to the nuclear codes?
Trump’s nuclear policy is all spelled out in a new conservative manifesto by Project 2025, a coalition of over 100 far-right groups led by the Heritage Foundation, which is widely seen as the template for a possible Trump 2.0 administration. If readers of the Bulletin have heard of Project 2025, chances are that they did not go through its 900-page book “Mandate for Leadership.” They should. This policy agenda, dubbed the “Conservative Promise,” is a blueprint for the most dramatic take-over and transformation of the US democracy in history.
The Project 2025 coalition members are staffed by over 200 former officials of the first Trump administration. These sophisticated Trump-movement MAGA operatives now know how to work the levers of government and have learned from what they see as their main mistake during Trump’s first term: leaving the “deep state” intact. These conservatives proudly served Donald Trump through his administration and attempted insurrection. They are now ready to help him complete the job and their plan is here for everyone willing to see.
“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained and prepared conservatives to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State,” writes Paul Dans, a former chief of staff of the Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration and now the director of Project 2025, in his foreword to the report. Russ Vought, the chief of staff of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump and now the president of the conservative think tank Center for Renewing America, agrees: “We have to be thinking mechanically about how to take these institutions over.” Vought vows to be “ready on Day One of the next transition,” adding, “Whatever is necessary to seize control of the administrative state is really our task.”
In the nuclear realm, “seizing control” would mean implementing the most dramatic build up of nuclear weapons since the start of the Reagan administration, some four decades ago. If this hawkish political coalition gets its way in November, the scope, pace, and cost of US nuclear weapons programs would increase all at once. Their plan, which seeks to significantly increase budgets and deployments of nuclear weapons and related programs and destroy the remaining arms control agreements, would dramatically increase the risks of nuclear confrontation as a result.
Nuclear proposals. The nuclear proposals are a key part of the Project 2025 coalition’s recommendations to reshape the Defense Department. This chapter is led by Christopher Miller, a former US Army special forces colonel who served as Trump’s last defense secretary. As Michael Hirsch reports in Politico, the agenda “is far more ambitious than anything Ronald Reagan dreamed up.” (In 1980, President Reagan ordered a massive nuclear buildup, which scholars now consider to have greatly escalated the Cold War.)
In condensed and translated form, Project 2025 proposes that a second Trump administration:
Prioritize nuclear weapons programs over other security programs.
Accelerate the development and production of all nuclear weapons programs.
Reject any congressional efforts to find more cost-effective alternatives to current plans.
Increase funding for the development and production of new and modernized nuclear warheads, including the B61-12, W80-4, W87-1 Mod, and W88 Alt 370.
Develop a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile, even though neither the administration nor the Navy has requested such a weapon, and the Navy has not fielded this type of weapon since they were retired by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.
Increase the number of nuclear weapons above current treaty limits and program goals, including buying more intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) than currently planned.
Expand the capabilities of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons production complex, including vastly increasing budgets, shedding non-nuclear weapons programs at the national laboratories (such as those devoted to the climate crisis) and accelerating production of the plutonium pits that are the cores of nuclear weapons.
Prepare to test new nuclear weapons, even though the United States has signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that prohibits such tests and has not tested a full-scale nuclear device since 1992.
Reject current arms control treaties that the coalition considers being “contrary to the goal of bolstering nuclear deterrence” and “prepare to compete in order to secure US interests should arms control efforts continue to fail.”
Dramatically expand the current national missile defense programs, including deploying as-yet-unproven directed energy and space-based weapons, or as the report puts it: “Abandon the existing policy of not defending the homeland against Russian and Chinese ballistic missiles.”
Invest in a sweeping, untested “cruise missile defense of the homeland.”
Accelerate all missile defense programs, national and regional.
These proposals would add unnecessary new weapons to an already expansive nuclear arsenal. If implemented, these new and expanded programs would accelerate the nuclear arms race the United States is already engaged in and encourage the expansion—or initiation—of new nuclear weapons programs in other nations around the globe.
He is, of course, all in on this. Because he knows about nuclear weapons. His uncle taught at MIT and he has the same genes. From 1986. (Trump hasn’t had a new idea in almost 40 years.)
Trump's eagerness to surrender to Russia is nothing new.
Even amidst total collapse of the USSR, Trump wanted to "negotiate", bowing to Moscow rather than just beating the bastards, which we did and can do again.
Good luck dude. Your whole inner circle and entourage are involved in Project 2025. The guy whose in charge of the RNC platform, Russell Vought who was also his budget director, has been named by the Republican National Committee as the policy director for the 2024 platform committee. He wrote the chapter on the executive office of the president for Project 2025 and is said to be in charge of planning for the first 180 days of a new Trump administration.
Come on. How about this from Trump extremely close associate John McEntee:
Here is Trump Senior Advisor and former appointee John McEntee, who helped draft Project 2025, explaining to Steve Bannon last July how Trump plans to implement the plan immediately after taking office. But Trump doesn’t know these people or anything about it. pic.twitter.com/XR9X2IbFAk
Everyone’s saying that Trump is running from the Heritage Foundation president saying that this is a second American revolution and there will be no bloodshed if “the left allows it.” But I think it’s about this:
It’s interesting to see the likes of David Frum recognize the imbalance in the media after all these years. People who read this blog have seen this for about three decades now. A thread:
“Donald Trump tried to overthrow an election by violence.”
That’s old news, we already reported that.
“As president, Donald Trump directed tens of millions of tax dollars to his own pockets.”
Old news.
“Russian intelligence helped elect Trump by illegal means. Trump welcomed the help.”
Russia, Russia.
“He was proven in court to have raped a woman.”
Civil proceeding, not criminal – and sexual assault, not rape. Besides … old news.
(cont’d)
“Two dozen other women say Trump attacked them. There’s literally a recording of him boasting about it!”
Old news, we litigated all that in 2016.
“There’s new news just unsealed about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein!”
“You don’t have to focus on the sex stuff. There’s more evidence that Trump gave a seat in cabinet to a man for no good reason other than to thank him for the Epstein cover-up.”
Arrant speculation. Also old news.
(cont’d)
“It’s not arrant speculation that Trump’s family falsified receipts to cheat the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.”
Old news.
“It’ll feel like new news because you ignored it at the time.”
We gave it a day.
“Trump used the same trick – false records – in all his many civil frauds, and also in the hush-money case that got him convicted of 34 felony counts by a jury!”
Complicated technicalities, you’re boring me.
(cont’d)
“You want simple? Someone bravely defied a non-disclosure agreement to go on the record that Trump used the most vicious racial slurs on the set of The Apprentice.”
Doubtful source.
“The ‘suckers and losers’ quote comes from an impeccable source.”
Old news.
“But Trump denied the ‘suckers and losers’ quote only last week during the nationally televised presidential debate. He lied to the whole country!”
Not our job to fact-check every word he says.
“But you personally know it to be a lie.”
Maybe we do, maybe we don’t.
“Okay, look, let’s do it your way. What does interest you?”
Indications of cognitive decline.
“We’ve got millions of examples of Trump obviously off his rocker.”
Right – he says crazy things all the time. Not news.
(cont’d)
“Are you telling me that the more often a candidate for president says addled, senile, crazy things – the less newsy it is?”
Not exactly. We also need a lot of background quotes about how his party is worried. If the party is cool with his dementia, we’re cool with it.
“These rules don’t seem on the level.”
We’re not the Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court isn’t on the level either.”
Oh, now you’re undermining confidence in our most sacred institutions. How is that different from Trump?
“Oh for God’s sake, the wives of two justices supported – and one conspired in – Trump’s Big Lie. I don’t understand why you sat on the story for two years.
Leave families out of it.
“Biden’s family too?”
We have to cover that, Trump’s made a campaign issue of it.
“I give up. Talk to me like I’m eight years old. How the hell do you explain what you’re doing?”
We have to report equal numbers of bad things about each side.
“But what if there aren’t equal numbers?”
That’s our job, to make sure that there are.
END
Yep.
And now we’re going to see the next chapter which is just as predictable:
The transition from Biden to the Harris "cover up" is in full effect. Despite the fact that it's absurd considering the administration's obvious competence at governance, she should have seen that Biden was ageing and called a press conference to announce it? It's ridiculous. https://t.co/eXWpW8fl1K
The Trump campaign is keeping a tight rein on the Christian right and the Christian right doesn’t like it
One of the more obvious signs that the Republican Party had devolved into a cult of personality was in 2020 when they decided to abandon writing a party platform in advance of the election and simply said that whatever Donald Trump wanted to do was fine with them. I don’t think that’s ever happened before but in the MAGA-fied GOP that sort of thing certainly isn’t unusual. However, they’re going back to the tradition of writing an actual platform this year and it’s causing some unexpected heartburn.
Just because party members want a platform doesn’t mean Trump does. But he and his campaign have acquiesced within certain parameters. The NY Times reported that Trump’s campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles sent a memo ordering the platform committee demanding they pare down the document “to ensure our policy commitments to the American people are clear, concise and easily digestible” because “publishing an unnecessarily verbose treatise will provide more fuel for our opponent’s fire of misinformation and misrepresentation to voters.” They made it clear that while it’s probably ok for the minions to have their little ideological exercise, it’s still Dear Leader’s “principled and popular vision for America’s future.”
There is some grumbling in the ranks about this, mostly from anti-abortion activists who want to ensure that the party doesn’t deviate from its long held goal of banning abortion nationwide despite Trump’s attempts to hide those intentions with his fatuous declarations that by overturning Roe v wade, he “sent it back to the states which is what everyone on both sides always wanted.” One staunch anti-abortion activist Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, appeared on CNN earlier and made it clear that she believes the platform should remain what it has been for 40 years.
For years, the GOP platform has endorsed a federal abortion ban, but that could change to reflect former President Donald Trump's views. @marjoriesba tells me on @InsidePolitics her message is: "Don't mess with what's been there for 40 years." pic.twitter.com/fd8i4gby00
As she points out, the campaign actually blocked anti-abortion delegates from participating and it’s not sitting well with that faction of the party. Politico reports:
According to the affidavits prepared for the RNC’s committee on contests, obtained by POLITICO, the Trump campaign and RNC staffers held a separate vote to elect a different slate of platform committee delegates.
The documents allege that at least two GOP staffers who were formerly employed by the Trump campaign “[pressured] them to vote against” Ryggs and Connelly and tried to “circumvent” the official vote.
Gosh, I wonder where they ever got the idea to do something like that?
Apparently, even big guns like Ralph Reed, founder and chair of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, are very concerned that this could demobilize the Evangelical vote. He told Politico:
I would strongly urge the leadership of the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign to proceed with great caution on the platform and avoid doing anything that would discourage or in any way deflate the enthusiasm of pro-life and evangelical vote. Right now, sitting here today, they are prepared to crawl across broken glass, to do everything in their power to see President Trump re-elected. I don’t want to see anything happen that would change that current dynamic.
A similar warning came from Tim Chapman, incoming president of the social conservative group Advancing American Freedom, who told ABC News “The talk of changing the Republican party’s pro-life platform is deeply concerning for pro-life Americans across the country,”
Reed is now leading what he calls the “Platform Integrity Project” in which he’s calling on the faithful to weigh in and demand that the platform holds to its hard-line position. The New York Times reported that a coalition of 10 conservative groups, including the Family Research Council , Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Concerned Women for America have urged Trump to “make clear that you do not intend to weaken the pro-life plank” while also praising him as “the most pro-life president in American history.”
And it isn’t just obfuscating the party’s radical position on abortion that has them upset. They don’t want anyone touching their other extremist policies either. As LGBTQ Nation reported, Suzanne Bowdey of the Family Research Council’s site is worried that the slimmed down platform might not include their opposition to “extremism like same-sex marriage and transgenderism which is currently part of a long section “that accuses the Supreme Court of “rob[bing] 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.” They are all in on outlawing IVF and using the Comstock Law to ban contraception and pornography as well.
Semafor reported that the campaign will attempt to keep this all under wraps by moving the writing of the platform behind closed doors, another break from tradition. Both parties have always written their platforms publicly for the delegates to see and offer input and they’ve allowed the press to have access and report on it. The meetings are usually aired on CSPAN. The Democrats plan to do that at their convention in August as they always have but the prospect of any kind of argument with the Trump campaign, or one suspects, the public airing of the campaign swatting down members of the rank and file will not be tolerated at the RNC. Keep the family squabbles behind closed doors at all costs. Their leader wants a united front.
None of this is to say that Trump has actually moderated his views. The truth is that he doesn’t really care about any of this culture war stuff but he is worried that overturning Roe v Wade is going to hurt him. He says at his rallies and in speeches, “you have to follow your heart but we need to win elections” which translates to, “don’t worry, I’m just saying this to win over voters, I’ll do whatever you want once I win the election.”
These folks shouldn’t worry too much. The men in charge of the Platform Committee are dedicated, far right extremists. One of them is Platform 2025’s top drafter, the Christian nationalist Russ Vought, who I wrote about here. Another is Trump loyalist Ed Martin, a longtime right wing operative who is best remembered in the general public for being fired by CNN for racist comments. As it happens CNN’s Kfiles turned up some footage of Martin that should come as a huge relief to the Christian right organizations. He’s so extreme that he wants to jail women who get abortions and ban the procedure with no exceptions:
NEW: Our report tonight on Ed Martin, who is helping craft the Republican Party's platform at the convention and has raised jailing women who get abortions and advocated for a national ban without exceptions for rape or incest. pic.twitter.com/cBzElHhLyr
These men are hard core Christian Nationalists who are involved in the planning for a second Trump term. And they are very practical about doing whatever it takes to regain power for that purpose. A little fudging on the platform, letting the Republicans pretend to the mainstream press that they aren’t radical in order to win over some of those valuable suburban moms is just the price of doing business. And frankly, political professionals like Ralph Reed and Marjorie Dannenfelser know that as well. They’re just playing the roles of anti-abortion activists for their flocks to show that they haven’t given up the fight. I’m confident they’ll all be on board the Trump train with full enthusiasm when the time comes.
