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mediacom. decades of dedication, decades of delivering, decades ahead. >> mediacom supports c-spaas a public service, along with these other television providers. giving you a front row seat to democracy. continues. host: our focus on the republican presidential transition plan known as project 2025. beau breslin, contributor to the fulcrum, where he has been analyzing project 2025. professor breslin, some background on that project. where they come from, who are the authors of this 900-page plan? guest: thank you for having me on the show. the background on the heritage foundation's project 2025, they have been doing this for a while. from the reagan administration. this happens to be the biggest,

most robust plan for a conservative administration. it's about 400 or so authors. about 140 of them have had some relationship to the trump administration. it's a bit of a playbook for a new conservative administration. everything from closing the department of education through to thinking differently about usa ids. it is a pretty comprehensive plan. host: how is it different from other presidential transition plans? do these plans usually come from a group like the heritage foundation or some other think tank? order they usually come from within the campaign? guest: they usually come from within the campaign. the heritage foundation has been doing this for a while. that said, what really differs about this is the strident

mentality of these authors. they seek inside and outside of the document about the ways in which we need to recover the country. some of their platform for a lot of democrats is quite scary. the details are the difference here. all transition teams are going to do something like this, but the details -- the devil is in the details. for a lot of people, it is a little unnerving. host: first, do you have any details on the extent of former president trump's involvement in this plan? you talked about plenty used to work in his administration being part of this plan. on his truth social account the president said, i know nothing

about project 2025. i have not seen it, i have no idea who is in charge of it, and unlike our well-received republican platform had nothing to do with it. from there, he says the radical left democrats are having a field day with this plan. guest: it is hard to believe that he didn't have something to do with it, in light of the fact that close to half of the people who wrote had some connection with his administration or him. i think the reason why he is densest t that she is distancing himself, there are a couple of different reasons. it is a political lightning rod. if not him, at least his people are telling him to stay away from talking about it because of the highly controversial nature of the document itself. i also think, you know, knowing and watching him in the

presidency from 2016-2021, one of the things that you come to realize is he wants to take credit. this is a very comprehensive, conservative agenda. i think one of the things that trump is probably thinking about is, i want to take credit for what i do if i win the presidency. so, having somebody else, or some organization like the heritage foundation tell him what to do is not consistent with his personality. third, i heard recently he is kind of super sisters. -- kind of superstitious. for him to say that this is a great plan and to think ahead to potentially winning in november -- he would have to knock on wood the whole time. i think for those three reasons he is distancing himself. mostly because it is a political lightning rod. host: we have until 8:40 five.

jump into the details. what is so controversial about this plan? guest: i think one of the things -- i have listed 12 things that for the most part the media and others have described as controversial. reducing bureaucracy and populating with the president's political allies, the mentality that you can eliminate civil servants at will and put your political allies in was sort of the big first round of controversy. it is not the only one. this document takes direct aim at the less-woke agenda. they call it a woke agenda. what you see is some of the things that joe biden and others have advocated. abortion, those sorts of things.

they are taking direct aim. they are the enemy here. eliminating medicinal abortions, mifepristone. eliminating the department of security, the department of education. these are very controversial. insisting on certain conservative agenda items in all foreign aid packages. there are about a dozen or so that the media and other commentators have decided our controversial.. host: don't all administrations, if it is a transition from one party to the other, take aim at the previous administration's policies that they disagree with in their transition plans? don't they compose their own agenda items that they want to implement? why is this specifically concerning people so much that they are putting this on the table? guest: what gets the most attention is the fact that there

are three pillars, three foundational pieces to this document. one, it is a neo-isolationist approach. we will entrench back. this is a trump policy and terms of foreign affairs and so on. two, it is all over the document this christian nationalist mentality. they speak a lot about the traditional family as the centerpiece of america. in principle we can agree with that, but at the end of the day and you take that and the next step in the conversation is, we are anti-transgender, anti-gay, anti-gender identity, antiabortion, all of these things, it will obviously get people on the left in particular nervous about it. the third thing is, which doesn't get a lot of airplay,

the third thing is probably the most problematic from a political science perspective. the notion of unitary executive theory. that means that the president and the executive -- the president controls everything in the executive branch. that is not what the founders intended by the presidency. this, project 2025, advocates for this very strong presidency where the president is entirely in control of the executive branch and puts his people in place that our political cronies and political allies. all three of those pieces, neo-ice nation -- neo-isolationism, christian nationalism, our super controversial and get people nervous. host: the number one controversy item was the view of the federal workforce and how a potential trump administration would treat

the workforce. it was last month that a former trump administration official with the heritage foundation, the lead on the transition project for the heritage foundation where project 2025 came from, he was on this program talking about the federal workforce, the political leanings that republican administrations come up against when it comes to the federal workforce. i want to play a minute and a half of what he said. [video clip] >> a federal government that is 99.5% protected. the president only appoints a small sliver of people, which is in itself a big derogation from the constitutional order talking about a government of, by, for the people. there is now a permanent government. when they republican or conservative president comes in to manage, he is sent by the people. they voted for change. how can he or she affect that change? the reality is, the vast

majority of policy jobs in washington are located in a cosmopolitan area that votes 95% democrat. the donations and federal workforce flow 95% to the democratic party. washington is not representative of our country. therein lies the problem. there should never be a political litmus test for a federal job, but there needs to be a respect for the job itself as civil service. it is taking on agenda and executing in a nonpartisan fashion. what president trump and republicans have endured back to reagan is based on an antidemocratic obstinate splitting into policy that people voted for. that is really the reformation. when we talk about reform to civil service, it is to make them a lot more like everybody else who is going to work every day on an at-will basis.

if you're not going to work to achieve the agenda that the people voted for, then you have to be accountable to that, which means being moved or terminated. host: professor breslin, what do you make of that explanation for why this document, transition plan, focuses so much on the federal workforce? guest: i think a lot of this document is hypocritical, to be honest. i think he is hypocritical in this moment, because he talks about cleaning house to bring in a nonpartisan civil service. right? his concern about the civil service is that it is 95% democrat. let's clean house and bring in a nonpartisan civil service. there is nothing in this document or in the agenda that the heritage foundation, nothing in that document that is

nonpartisan. it is a conservative agenda. what troubles me the most about what he says, and he uses numbers if you go into that particular interview, 4000 of the 2.2 million employees are presidential appointee. there is some speculation that the new administration might get rid of 50,000 civil servants. i think the number is somewhere between 4000 and 50,000. that said, what is troubling and should trouble a lot of us, is the partisan approach to filling those vacancies. what he is suggesting when he talks about nonpartisanship is flat out wrong. they are going to put people in into the other pieces of project 2025, clearinghouse for

conservatives. for people who want to work in washington. and the training, the online training courses. these are two of the four pillars of 2025. it is not nonpartisan. i am troubled when they talk about nonpartisan. the reality is, it is very conservative, very republican. host: professor beau breslin is our guest. political science professor and contributor to the fulcrum. he has been writing about project 20 tony five th -- project 2025 there. the phone lines are open. democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. what is the fulcrum for folks who have not read it? guest: i'm glad you asked. the fulcrum is a daily digital publication that comes from the bridge alliance. a fantastic organization that

tries to literally bridge the left and the right. figure out a way to have conversations across partisan tribalism. that organization has been going on for more than a decade. they put out a daily publication called the fulcrum. they are doing a 30-piece series on project 2025. i contributed a couple to the 30-piece, but they are literally taking each individual chapter and talking and across partisan way about the way some of the things are coming out and the ways we could think differently about each of the targets of project 2025. i encourage all of your listeners to go to the fulcrum and read those. they have done 12 already. they have 18 to go. host: this is john in bradenton,

florida, independent. caller: yes. about the first two sentences of your guest, and thank you for taking my call. this is the only place that i can talk to america. c-span being very liberal itself. all of the commentators are very liberal. that's ok. i got my voice in. he said it is hard to believe that trump doesn't know. his consensus was that trump does know about it. his consensus is his opinion. we don't care what his opinion is. this is something that if trump says he doesn't know about project 2025, then why even say he is lying about it? the lies come from the left. trump never said he was going to be a dictator. he was going to do what biden did on his first day. arbitrarily remove everything

biden put in just like biden removed stuff that trump put in. here we go. take it. host: professor breslin on donald trump? guest: i didn't accuse him of lying. i said it's hard to believe. that is my personal opinion. you are right about that. at the end of the day, i don't actually know. that said, 140 of the authors have some relationship with him. if i am a betting man, i am going to assume that he at least knew this was being done and perhaps had informal conversations. but that is entirely speculative. you might be right, trump might in fact know nothing about it. host: burnsville, minnesota, larry, democrat, you are next. caller: mr. breslin, i am interested in what project 2025 is going to do to social security, medicare, medicaid. i understand it wiot