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buckeye broadband supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> this afternoon white house press secretary karloine leavitt will speak about the trump agenda and face questions about his position on the russia-ukraine war after recently calling the ukrainian president a dictator. we will have live coverage on the briefing on c-span and you can watch on the free video app or online at c-span.org. you are serving as the director of the prince -- presidential

transition effort. could you walk us through what happened with you and project 2025 in the months since then. guest: project 2025 was a 2.5 year effort that we started in the spring of 2022. it was a coming together of citizens all over the country and we became 110 groups all focused on helping the next conservative president hit the ground running. what has happened, we got a lot of work done and made a contribution and i am very happy to see that these ideas have entered the bloodstream and what president trump and his team has accomplished is miraculous. i stepped down from the project at the end of the summer money 24 but, what is going on, we have wrapped our work. and i no longer work at the heritage foundation. so my ideas are my own.

it has been fantastic to watch president trump moves like greased lightning. host: how much of project 2025 is evident in the first month of the trump administration? guest: this is all donald trump. if a man did not get up and say fight, none of this would be happening. it is really the indomitable spirit of one man, but that is the essence of leadership. many of the ideas that we brought our common sense. they are ultimately about wringing people back into our government. a government of, by and for the people and that was essential postulate to deconstruct this unaccountable administrative state. host: how do you deconstruct it? guest: by making it transparent and to show the rest of the company -- the country what has been happening in washington. that is part of the genius of

donald trump in working with elon musk to really bring to the fore what we have all kind of suspected. but, what is earth shattering, really. and you know, we are seeing that we have a $2 trillion structural deficit going up $50 trillion of debt. anyone who claims that the status quo and says that this thing is working is either in on it or completely confused. host: i guess the question is what we seeing now project 2025 inaction? guest: it is common sense, a lot of commonality in what we put forward where a lot of trump ideas from term one. so, what we are seeing is aspirational hopes as well. these are the things that we hoped could have been done but we did not have the political will to do it.

we had a democratic congress in the latter half of the house. and these were ideas in the main that have percolated through the conservative movement and just center-right for decades. host: remind people what was in project 2025. was a department of government efficiency in project 2025? guest: there was not the department. but the idea with project 2025 was that the conservatives had to be ready to help the next president govern. that as, particularly independent streak that we all have in us, conservatives have never come together as a group. it was important that we put aside petty differences to support the next president. what we did in standing up project 2025 was really looking at our friends on the left and how they get ready and saying to

the entire country like be ready and prepared. to the extent that there is a reflection on what is being done by president trump now is that he is team is ready to roll. i think they really wanted to be prepared to hit the ground. host: what do you think the reputation was by the end of the 2024 election? guest: i think the ideas of project 2025 and what you see now are popular at base. what the democrats had done was one of the great electoral failures, which was they put $300 million reportedly into castigating project 2025 and a two part misinformation play one that had nothing to do with president trump and many other so-called ideas reflected in project 2025. it showed a great contempt for their own base. and it ultimately, it is the law

of unintended consequences. what you are seeing now is project 2025 on a hold other host: president trump felt the need to respond to his connection to project 2025. this is about 30 seconds during the campaign stop in july. president trump: like some on this right, severe right came up with this project 2025. they are very conservative. just like you have the opposite of the radical left. you have the radical left and the radical right. i don't know what it is this project 2025. they read some of the things and they are extreme. i don't know anything about it. i don't want to know anything about it. host: extreme came up by the

radical right, i don't know anything about it. what was your estimation? guest: there is no person on earth who has been more attacked by fake news than president trump. he is a genius with politics. the left had taken a lot of that to ms. frame project 2025. he made statements subsequent to that that say many are very good. some of the bad ideas actually are not even in project 2025, they are grafted on. the ivf contingent. there is not a word about ivf. democrats and allies spent millions of dollars trying to say this had something to do with ivf. host: was it shutting down or folding in usaid, did that come out of project 2025?

guest: they do a very good treatment on usaid. really going at the heart of how this operation has been running counter to u.s. foreign interests for decades now. it is unaccountable money. what i think they have done is taken it to another level. they have flagged the issue and brought it under the state department. host: there will be a vote today on linda mcmahon as education secretary, a lot of discussion in her nomination hearing about reductions to the department of education, democrats concerned about shutting down the department of education. what does project 2025 say about the department of education? guest: secretary soon to be i hope mcmahon is extremely accomplished as a business woman

, former cabinet secretary. i fully commend what she is going to do. with the department of education, the heritage foundation put out the mandate for leadership from president reagan. at that stage, the book was already calling for the abolition of the department. host: what is the book? guest: the mandate for leadership served in 1980. this was the original guide for leadership. fast forward 40 years later, we are making the same appeal. i went to public schools. i went on to m.i.t. undergrad. my mom was a public school teacher. you will not find someone with more beliefs in the public school system. i really feel it is broken. i have four kids and we have to homeschool two of them because

we have this great system that i wouldn't be where i am today, i saw so much dedication doing this work from my mother. the system is not working. it needs to be put back into control, the federal mandate needs to relax and be much more accountable. host: do you have a role in the second trump administration? guest: on the outside, i'm very supportive of the work they are doing. every day we wake up it is christmas morning. i'm a proud citizen of south carolina. i'm happy to say there is a great buoyancy among everyday americans that president trump is delivering on promises. when he gets into this tremendous tagteam duo with elon

musk cutting through in a way that the deep state never really saw, it is just exciting. host: would you like to go back into the administration if offered? guest: it is always my honor to serve president trump and the administration. host: what did you do in the first term? guest: i first started at hud. i worked on the campaign. i was an attorney. i didn't know how to navigate washington. host: what is a white shoe law firm? guest: the guys who build $2000 an hour. they are high-end corporate firms. they work for a lot of corporate america defending, going through regulations. that is not to say they aren't talented lawyers but they are expensive. that is where i grew up in new

york. you come out of law school, you don't have much of a choice. i did come from means. i followed that trajectory. it took me two years to get into the administration. i started in community planning and development. i got a quick taste of bureaucracy with dr. carson. i moved on to the office of personnel management where i was white house liaison. omb. host: explain who russ is an did you work with him? guest: one of the most talented men in the movement. formerly the director of omb. he has been confirmed to be director again. host: the office of mem