From SHORTZ Media. I'm Rick Morton.
This is seven AM. President Joe Biden has spent the last week trying to recover from a debate performance that's been described as calamitous and agonizing.
Was this a bad episode with a sign of a more serious condition.
It's a bad episode. No, one, kid's very serious condition of success.
The New York Times, top donors and several of his congressional colleagues have been calling for him to leave the race, but at this point he's still refusing.
If you can be convinced that you can knock defeat Donald Trump while you stand out.
Well the fans of I know as the Lord or Mighty comes out and tells me that I might do that well.
And as Donald Trump's leading the polls, Whydon's attention is now turning to the former president's potential agenda if you were to win another term, with one particular blueprint raising concern. It's called Project twenty twenty five and includes calls to expand presidential power, dismantle federal agencies, and dramatically increase America's military capability. Today, senior researcher at the Australian Institute, doctor Emma shortas on Project twenty twenty five and why its
authors are threatening a second American revolution. It's Monday, the eighth of July. Emma shortis the pressure for President Biden to pull out of the US presidential election is increasing quite intensely as his popularity continues to slide. Of course, there was that disastrous debate, and that also means the likelihood of a second Trump presidency is going up as well. So how will Trump two point zero actually be different this time around compared to Trump's first go rick.
It's always, of course, difficult to predict anything about Donald Trump because he is such a loose canon. But it's pretty clear if you look not so much at Trump himself but the kind of structures that have been built beneath him, that a second Trump presidency would be radically different.
From the first.
Particularly, the first couple of months of the Trump presidency were marked by chaos, mostly because Trump and the people around him didn't really understand how American power functions and how to use the systems of American power to get what they want.
One of the things that has made this White House different from all the other White Houses is the amount of leaking that happens inside it. This White House is so leaking. Last year, Axials published a piece entitled White House Leakers Leak about leaking.
And that is no longer true. They've really learnt the lessons of particularly those early days of the Trump presidency. In fact, there are plan written by the Heritage Foundation and about one hundred other conservative think tanks in the United States for pretty much every single federal department and agency, every policy area that you can think of, with pretty extraordinary radical ideas for what that second Trump presidency would do.
What Project twenty twenty five is trying to do is issue a corrective a series of new regulation or deregulation, new policies, new leadership to undo, to correct the century long capital p progressive project of establishing a fourth branch of government, the administrative state.
Project twenty twenty five is a plan for the next conservative presidency. This is how they describe it, and it's attempting to replicate what they did in the nineteen eighties for the Reagan administration, where they handed Reagan the plan for a conservative policy agenda for the president that he went on to implement it.
I thank you, Heritage, thanks you, and so does the conservative movement. But I can't help reflecting tonight and the fact that Heritage ten actually exceeded its fundraising goal by two million dollars.
You know, Originally, I think you could have classified Heritage as a kind of traditionally conservative organization, particularly in the Reagan era. You know, it was all about implementing conservative policies, particularly kind of social conservatism when it came to Reagan. And really they almost kind of collapsed and felp totally out of favor once Trump won. But what they've done is successfully kind of rebuild themselves in his image and
particularly in the image of the far right. Increasingly. You know, you can see the Heritage Foundation and Project twenty twenty five really dominating the kind of far right media universe in particular. So Kevin Roberts, for example, who's the president of their Heritage Foundation, has been on television just this week saying that something along the lines of the revolution will be bloodless if the left allows it to be.
We're in the process of taking this country back. The reason that they are apoplectic right now, the reason that so many anchors on MSNBC, for example, are losing their minds daily, is because our side is winning, and so I come full circle in this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the Second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows.
It to be. Oh, it's a threat, it's absolutely threat.
It's absolutely a threat. And the language is about warfare and joining the mission. So again, you know, they're not hiding any of this. And they're even former Trump administration officials who are still you know, incredibly loyal, who are still very much in that inner circle, who are participating and driving this project twenty twenty five, and you can see, particularly in the last week, they are increasingly convinced that they've already won.
So we're actually in plan. Tell me about the details.
It's a nine hundred page manifesto for the next administration. It's extraordinary, and it goes into the most meticulous detail, down to low level appointments, down to low level budget lines and how budget should be allocated. You know, there's a suggestion, for example, that the entire Federal Reserve be dismantled.
And alongside that mandate for leadership those detailed plans, they also have a recruitment arm which is kind of like a Conservative LinkedIn where members of a far right can express their interest in working in a future conservative administration. And what these candidates have to go through is kind of a rigorous loyalty test where they they're asked questions not about their expertise in particular policy areas, but about their loyalty to far right America and Trump in particular.
And this bank of potentially tens of thousands of people again will be handed to a future conservative administration, and the idea is that that administration will use something called Schedule F, which is an old Trump executive order that reclassifies independent civil servants as political appointees so that they can be summarily fired and replaced with Trump loyalists, who, through another aspect of this Heritage Foundation plan, have gone through a whole lot of education programs in how to
use power in the federal bureaucracy to achieve their ends. So all of that together represents this pretty extraordinary effort to radically reshape American politics and American culture in order to implement a far right agenda.
We've spoken a lot about the domestic institutions that might be dismantled and I mean, we've always been taught that America is home to exceptionalism. But what does it mean for the rest of the world if this kind of stuff gets the full traction of President Trump's office.
I think it's such an important question because so often in Australia we treat kind of the domestic politic culture of our of the United States as separate to its international presence. You know, our relationship with the United States,
the alliance is something entirely different from domestic politics. But particularly what this Heritage Foundation plan does is demonstrate how you can't make that separation, because you know, plans to dismantle the Federal Reserve in the most powerful economy in the world will have unbelievable kind of mind boggling implications for the international economic system, for example. So there's that, But when you look at foreign policy as well, their
plans are incredibly radical. You know, Trump has already been talking about his plans for China, for example, and putting up to one hundred percent tariffs on Chinese goods coming to the United States, which will again create significant economic turmoil internally in the United States, but that also means
economic turmoil externally. And then when you put that alongside the Project twenty twenty five plans for foreign policy, and the biggest one that stands out to me is a recommendation that engagement with China should be ended and not refought.
That is why we will launch an all out campaign to eliminate America's dependence on Shila.
The reason is primarily that the forces behind Project twenty twenty five and Trump as well, see China as an existential threat to the United States. So this is a kind of new Cold War framing where the only way to defeat this existential threat is with force and aggression, you know, be it economic or military. It involves plans to increase the force posture of the American military, so the number of troops, for example, by up to fifty thousand, and move many of them to the Indo Pacific as
well out of Europe. And I'm not sure that we are necessarily considering the implications of that and how an Australian government might manage that considerable upheaval, because there are also plans as well, I should add, to significantly increase the nuclear arsenal of the United States, and the line in Project twenty twenty five around that is that the arsenal should be increased in order to deter both China
and Russia at once. So the magnitude of that planned increase again is really really quite frightening considering whose hands, you know, those weapons are going to be in.
After the break. How the man standing between the rest of the world and Trump, Joe Biden, is failing to ease lories about his age and capacity.
To lead, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with with the COVID I e. Scul you, with dealing with everything we have to do with what we finally beat Medicare.
Thank you, President Emma.
Donald Trump has been underestimated before, there's no doubt about that, and now only months away from the election, there's essentially one person standing between him and the White House. But there are a lot of questions about Joe Biden's capability, particularly after what was a catastrophic debate performance recently.
That's right, I think you know, every time you look back at it or listen back to it, it gets worse and worse, and Biden and the Biden camp have since kind of quietly admitted that they know they've got a matter of days really to recover and to convince Democrats that they can win.
At a five raiser in Virginia last night, the President blamed his performance on jet lag, saying, quote, I decided to travel around the world a couple of times shortly before the debate, I didn't listen to my staff, and then I almost fell asleep on stage.
You know, if you go back to twenty twenty and the nominating process in the Democratic Party, there was a pretty extraordinary suite of young, diverse its, including Kamala Harris, who looked very much like the next generation of the Democratic Party. And part of Biden's I think pitch in his ability to win that nomination was his promise to be a generational bridge to that next generation really of
diverse leadership in a Democratic Party. And I think part of what we can underestimate about Biden's trouble now is the depth of that feeling of betrayal that you know, he hasn't acted as a bridge to the next generation. The combination of Biden's catastrophic debate performance, that and the momentum behind calls for him to step aside. Once that momentum starts, it's pretty difficult to stop it.
Amid the calls from some for President Biden to bow out of the race, from a Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio says Vice President Kamala Harris should replace Biden at the top of the ticket.
Biden's dilemma, I suppose, is that if he does step aside, he needs to anoint a successor. He needs to make I guess, a kind of clear pathway for the next candidate, and he has effectively already made the choice of who should be his successor.
Everything is in context.
My mother used to she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, I don't know what's wrong.
With you, young people.
You'd think you just fell out of a coconut tree.
Harris is probably the best placed candidate in terms of the actual structures that you need behind you in order
to win a national election campaign. So there's a lot of noise about other potential candidates as well, but none of them have I don't think the national recognition that Harris has, or the kind of campaign architecture sitting behind them that they would need, because, of course, Harris, in the event that she did become the preferred candidate, would inherit Biden's campaign and his campaign structure and also his donors.
She polls reasonably well, but not much better than Biden when it comes to a head to head against Trump. But I have to admit to being very skeptical of that kind of polling. You know, I'd be wary of putting too much stock in it because there's a pretty big difference between being a hypothetical candidate and being an actual candidate. And to go back to the kind of grim nature of American politics at the moment as well, I think we can't underestimate the scale of the backlash
that would come if Harris was the candidate. If you had a black woman as a candidate, the far right in the United States will lose whatever is left of its collective mind. But there is also acknowledgment that Harris is not a progressive savior. You know, she was a prosecutor before she was the vice president and so you'll often see descriptions of her as a cop as well.
And I think part of the trepidation around Harris as well is that she may not mobilize that progressive base of the Democratic Party, particularly young people and people of color, in the way that she would need to win a general presidential election. So I think there's a long way to go.
You mentioned earlier when we were chatting that maybe we haven't really considered the ramifications of a second Trump presidency, particularly on some of the foreign policy issues. Are we prepared as a country for what might happen under Trump?
I don't think we are, you know, I think that. I mean, there has been increasing coverage I think of the preparations that the Australian government may or may not be making for a second Trump presidency, most of which seem, from the outside at least, to center around how the
government would manage Trump personally. You know, it's the old kind of ambassador Joe Hockey approach, where you get someone in who's good but not too good at golf, who can have a relationship, like, you know, your personal relationship with the president in order to kind of carve out individual exemptions for Australia from the worst of the Trump policies.
Remember the first time around, when Trump was elected and Malcolm Turnble didn't know how to get in touch with him. So he used Greg Norman.
The golfer exactly to like just call Trump, to call Trump directly. Yeah, exactly right. And you know, I think we can see a real effort on the part of the Israian government to make sure that that doesn't happen again, you know, to make sure that they have avenues into a potential Trump administration. There's been coverage saying that Ambassador Kevin Rudd is doing exactly that. You know, he's building up relationships with people who would be kind of central
to a second Trump administration. But it does seem to be around the question of management of a Trump administration based on the assumption that Australia should maintain the same level of closeness in that alliance that we do now
and that we have done for decades. So again, you know, so much of the focus is on if Trump is elected, like will he let us keep the Orchest submarine deal without I think a consideration of what keeping the Orcest submarine deal in light of a potential Trump administration's approach to China, for example.
Might.
So for me, those bigger questions aren't really being asked, and especially in light of you know, the language coming out of trump Land, the language coming out of Project twenty twenty five about revolutions and the dismantling of American democracy.
You know, there are some pretty big questions there about Australia's so called shared values with the United States and what it would mean to maintain that same level of closeness with you know what effectively could be an authoritarian regime where now, because of a recent Supreme Court decision, the President of the United States is beyond the.
Law, Doctor Ama Shorts, Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Pleasure, Thank you so much for having me.
Also in the news today, the Prime Minister Anthony Alberanezi has congratulated newly elected British Prime Minister Kiir Starmer in a phone call over the weekend. They reportedly discussed the economy, climate change and UCAS and agreed to stay in close touch. And Auntie Muriel Bamblet has been awarded Person of the
Year at the National Nightouck Awards. Auntie Muriel has been the CEO of the Victorian Aboriginal Childcare Agency for twenty five years and was recognized for her ongoing advocacy of Aboriginal children and families. This is seven am. I'm Rick Morton. See you tomorrow.