From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control Decant. Most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Ooh the or well you feel it when you hear it. Who controls the past controls the future? Guys? Not too long ago. It seems like just yesterday there was an election. Remember time is weird, guys.
I think the pandemic really screwed time perception up for all of us. Also, getting older sort of skews time a little bit. I feel like it contracts and expands a little differently than when you're young, and you know, a year seems like an eternity, and now it's just like a blip.
It's odd. Yeah. People who are not in the United States are always laughing when we talk to them, and they always say, oh, it's another election. Oh that's happening again. The rhetoric is heating up. There is an ideological battle, and the battle lines are drawn, the debates are underway. Like as you hear this tonight, folks, there have already been at least a couple of debates between the two
main US presidential candidates, Republican Donald Trump Democrat Joe Biden. Again, as John Stewart pointed out, they will be the two oldest guys running.
Yeah, ever, it's a race to see who's best great great granddad.
No, I think Joe likes to go by Uncle Joe. Isn't that sort of I guess there's Uncle Bernie. But just the term uncle gets thrown around a lot, you know, because they don't want.
To go with grandpa.
Grandpa Joe evokes images of that that sponge Grandpa Joe from the Willy Wonka movie.
You know, nobody likes.
Sim gotta say great Grandpa Joe.
And the thing about these guys is, look, we know that political conversations can be sensitive, so we're exploring things with objectivity. The objective truth is that both Trump and Biden have been president before. One of these guys was vice president before he became president. Kaugh cough Bush whatever. And the groups they represent both of these, the purported
Democrats the purported Republicans. They have a huge agenda before them, policies and laws that, if enacted, will determine the course of our great American experiment. None of this is unfamiliar. There's one thing, however, that may change the game. The supporters see it as a silver bullet to solve America's many, many problems. The opponents see it as a conspiratorial, existential threat to the idea of democracy. The name for this thing is Project twenty twenty five. Here are the facts well.
Project twenty twenty five, or the Presidential Transition Project, as it's more officially known, was spearheaded by something called the Heritage Foundation. This whole thing is essentially a collection of policy proposals that are meant to restructure the entire federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win in
twenty twenty four. This whole thing began in twenty twenty two with the goal of bringing on tens of thousands of Conservatives into DC and the hopes of replacing existing federal servants public servants with individuals more aligning with a certain set of ideological goals.
Right, Yeah, and that's at every level, so starting younger folks, especially at the lower levels and moving them up kind of the way Ben and I started as interns at How Stuff Works.
Hey, come on.
It's also one of those things where a lot of folks seem to think that some of the maybe more regressive ideas in politics, some of the slightly more othering and perhaps could be even characterized eightful ideas will eventually get aged out as younger people enter into politics with more progressive ideas. This is designed to mitigate that and make sure those young people are in line with the ideas that are already in place by said party.
Which you know, if we just take this alone, right, this isn't a crazy idea. It's people who want what they want, and they've got a plan to try and get people who like the things they like to do to do enact laws and make policies for stuff they like.
That's the same the toorch sort of white kid doesn't make a Christmas list.
But I guess what I mean is this alone, this fact alone, as like, if that's what Project twenty twenty five was, Okay, that's what it is. It's a plan and it's out there in the open. Nobody needs to be afraid of that. That's not that weird.
Yeah, the thing is the idea. There is a sort of bad faith actor concept in terms of specifically putting people in positions of authority over a thing they seek to eliminate. Not too long ago, former presidential candidate Rick Perry ran on the idea of eliminating the Department of Energy. He did not win the election for potus. He ended up being the Secretary of the Department of Energy.
Yeah, that's a really good point, though, Ben if the sole purpose not just to replace existing public servants in those positions, but to replace them and then wipe it out like whatever it is.
Well, we see all the time, though, how you know, folks as like maybe a bit of an atta boy get placed in positions, these high level positions, you know, heading up departments.
We're talking about Secretary of State Hillary Clint.
That or even members of the Heritage Foundation.
Will get it. I guess.
My point though, is that a lot of times they're placed in these positions with zero qualifications or experience in whatever the logistical you know, like actual things that require experience might be to head up something like the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation.
You know, I mean you would think there would come.
To be an expert, give us an expert.
You know.
Well, the expertise, as we'll find, is proposed in terms of ideology rather than the subject at hand. The philosophical heart of Project twenty twenty five is a controversial interpretation of Article two of the US Constitution. It's this idea called the unitary executive theory, but it's taken to the extreme. It's the idea that if you are president of the United States, you have absolute, absolute power over the executive branch from the moment you end your oath of service,
you can do whatever. And we'll get into the specifics as we continue our exploration, but before we do, maybe the best way to understand Project twenty twenty five is to look at its parent organization, its creator. It's Potter familias the Heritage Foundation.
Oh, ky, does the word heritage feel a little dog whisty to you? Like, I mean, maybe I'm being extreme, but it just feels to me sort of like the idea of the way patriot has been sort of twisted in this odd way. To me, Heritage describes like, yeah, we want things to be like they used to be, you know, back when things were so good. But the things, the times that we're talking about are the imagine thing.
The things that they weren't actually that good. They were bad for many, many, many, many people.
Yeah, for sure, in very very specific ways. This organization is what we call a think tank, right, that's very important to get out there. There are many think tanks, as we've discussed on this show. This one specifically was set up in nineteen seventy three to influence Congress, to influence lawmakers, and specifically to influence them in conservative values, in conservative legislation, things that would be I guess considered conservative. Again,
that is a weird thing too. Conservative. Liberal has like changed has a couple of times, right.
Like democratic preimposed Civil war, like the nomenclature will change. The idea also that I think we're getting at here, Matt, is that there is nothing wrong with identifying as a conservative person.
Absolutely, It's just different. It's just different. And again, every individual is an individual, right, so you can't paint everybody with the same brush. It's just these specific individuals that founded the Heritage Foundation. What would you say, came from money?
I would argue that they are leveraging and weaponizing certain psychological tendencies or identifications to advance the end of democracy. And I know we're interesting. I know we're not yet at the part where we go crazy. But here are the facts. As you said, Matt, it is a think tank, the Heritage Foundation or street name Heritage, founded in nineteen seventy three by a get this, a nice triumvirate, Paul Wayrich Edwin and Joseph Course these of course, course of
the course. Course of course you are.
So good you can drink it with your mouth, I believe is the tagline. Uh well, for disclosure, we've done ads for course, we were talking about it off off the air.
Just put it out there right now. So let's walk through these guys. So, Paul Weyrich is a big time what we would call religious activist Christian religious activist commentator. He is the guy who coined the term moral majority. Nice one, Paul, I love that one would approve or disapprove. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. He would say, it's double plus. I'm good. Yes, But this guy, Paul also also co founded something. We have a previous episode on the American
Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC. ALEC love that ALEC. Can we describe ALEC real quick?
I wish we would. I'm a little foggy on the details.
So ALEC is a again a think tank, a thought leader, and what they have been accused of and proven to have done is to write legislation and then hand it to members of Congress who just rubber stamp it.
That's right, yeah, yeah, which is again something that the Heritage Foundation does. We're going to get into it, but if you look up some of their early publications that ended up turning directly into legislation, like Mandate for Leadership Policy Management in a Conservative administration, or the ones that Waywich probably had a lot to do with, where they extol the virtues of religion and how religion is going to stop illegitimate babies and it's time stop.
Have you heard about religion, well, the new thing, but it.
Was a big deal in the news, especially in the news cycles. We'll get into all this stuff, but they they basically said, hey, guys, religion is getting a bad rap these days. We really need to fight for religion and get people in Congress to talk about how awesome religion is again.
What about that separation of church and state. That's fine, Get him out of here.
Can I just point out nominative determinism is hilarious and delightful. The guy's name is way Rich just putting that out there, Homie is way Rich in w y R.
H In Christ. The second guy we Mentionedner Fulner Junior. Technically he's a former congressional aid. He's a real like little Finger, he's a whisperer. He's a quote unquote foreign consultant, whatever the hell that means. Uh. He served as a full time think tank executive. He was president of Heritage from nineteen seventy seven all the way to twenty thirteen, So I guess they don't have elections either. And then
he was president that's for me. And then he was president again from twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen, so he returned for another term.
You cou'd say, well, and then to your point earlier, ben about expertise, it becomes a different flavor of what expertise actually means. In this case, it's a matter of like the foremost sort of standard bearer of a set of goals, a set of yeah policy ideology, whatever. It's not necessarily about who's the best man for the job, the best person for the job based on years of
experience within a certain field. It's more about being like you said, that term, which also I find to be loaded in orwellian thought leader.
Mm hmm.
Well.
And one of the things that ED did is create this thing called within the Heritage Foundation called the Resource Bank that ends up being another way, kind of like Project twenty twenty five, to bring in other thought leaders to function both within the Heritage Foundation and independently to
work with the Heritage Foundation basically to get policy. Again, the same thing trying to influence Congress, but in this way, not through words that you write in a giant, you know, a couple hundred page document that gets sent to specific Congress members, but by individuals who end up having little chats with a Congress member or something.
And you know, democracy is designed so that the individual citizen can in theory influence Congress can in theory influence policy. But you start to realize when you talk about these organizations, is that the decks are way stacked against the individual because of these mega, mega powerful groups of whisperers that have direct access that you or I or people you know of our kind of echelon. Uh could never possibly attain what.
No way, uh, and none of this would be none of this would be possible without the third of our triumvirate. Here, Joseph COR's senior, the grandson of Adolph Coors, not Adolf Hitler, Adolf course, uh, the Hitler of beer, the Hitler beer. That's a great tack, like, no, you guys didn't have that. Two Cours. Yeah, So Joseph Cours for a long time was the president of the Corps Brewing Company. He actually
funny story. He came up working for the company in their porcelain division because Cores had a porcelain division to keep them alive during prohibition. But they made it, and now.
Were Coors beers at at any given time sold in porcelain or completely separate. I just wonder what usually when you see these pivots during wartime or whatever, it's because they already had the infrastructure of the machinery to do said other things.
Like how refrigerator manufacturers made tanks. That's right, just curious. I wouldn't I wouldn't be surprised.
That what if they were manufacturing corps urinals. That's brilliant.
Finally, did you make you have to pay? We call that vertical illegration. That's the best. That's the best idea Everard all bit Well, the best way to say, the best way to describe our pal Joe is to say that he was the money guy for the Heritage Foundation. He provided an annual let's call it. Perhaps endowment is a little better and stipend maybe. Yeah. At first, Heritage
was like so many other think tanks. It was an ideological organization, was kind of struggling to get policymakers and nerds and billionaires or I guess we should say tycoons on its side agree with us right and proselytize for us. We want to be contagious. All think tanks want to be contagious. By the Reagan era of the nineteen eighties, Ronald Reagan, famous actor, was also president for a bit in the United States. By the Reagan era, the Heritage
Foundation assumed a leading role in conservative thought. The Reagan administration took so many policy cues from Heritage, and so from their perspective, things are awesome. It's working. They're like the most successful think tank in DC.
And on heritage website they say they basically wrote the quote policy Bible for the Reagan administration. That's everything from regulations on crime, taxes, national defense, that strategic defense in the wars exactly, and which is just a missile defense shield a concept, right if you imagine. We've talked about this on other episodes, but like with the Project from the New American Century, they were all about this too in the early two thousands.
Also, I will say, I don't think Reagan ever read that Bible. Well, I don't think Trump. I don't think Trump oh that Bible. Sorry, I just yeah, like like like like Trump policy Bible. That's fair, Yeah, like.
Trump probably never read the actual facts Bible.
I do want to.
I think it's very interesting the way the term that what you're describing the ex Bible or whatever has been adopted in cinema and in like creative circles or like even like in a company, you have the Bible, which is your design standards, you know, for like your your logos and branding.
It's all in this Bible.
But I do think the use of that term back in this day is a little more pointed than what it has become.
Very much right. Yeah. Yeah, the more secular term would be a concordance.
People use Bible though, man, I mean, I know you guys have both worked with different teams and creatives and stuff, and like a show Bible, Yeah, would be the arcs of various characters as is codified within the universe and the world of your story. I just think it's an interesting the way that term has evolved.
I get in trouble if I call it a Torah or a Quran in American English, you just gotta call it the Bible.
Oh yeah, yeah, I think that's just an industry term that's been.
But I just wonder if if this is this is describing something very similar. It is a set of standardized things that we all as an organization must follow.
Yeah, it's that mandate for leadership policy management. And a conservative administration that had two thousand recommendations in it. And according to the Heritage Foundation, maybe they're tooting their own horn here a little bit, but the Reagan administration, according to them, they adopted two thirds of those two thousand recommendations all of the testaments.
Yeah, that's the Reagan era, and they have multiple guys. Mandate for leadership is a franchise novel. Yes, it continues, and Project twenty twenty five has its own Mandate for Leadership as well. You know, we see this during the weird thing about It, our Palchuck would call it hinky. The hinky thing about it is that, regardless of which political party is in office, every single administration since Nixon has adopted at least a few of Heritage Foundation's ideas.
George H. W. Bush got pushed into Desert Storm inspired by Heritage He adopted six of the ten policies written in Mandate for Leadership three A the return. However, what do they call it? A suggestion for leadership three? You know, mandate. So now there's these these things are very intentional. Well they're two there, there's still a little too scared to call them commandments. That's also true, guys.
I was just thinking really quick, and we're talking about policy bibles for administrations. I just want to point out here that every other presidency has had some kind of organization, think tank, whatever that's kind of in their corner.
Right.
It's not always Heritage Foundation, it's not always you know, something on the liberal side. But there is one called the Center for American progress that had a huge impact on several presidents who were at least recently democratic.
And you know it's in the back of every room, rand dude.
Another way, you guys, remember a project for the New American Century? Yes, sir, that was a popular one as well for a time in DC in terms of shaping foreign policy with a decidedly conservative bent.
Oh hey, and they sorry, they just like, just like the Heritage Foundation, have these giant headquarters that are just a quick little stroll the Capitol Hill.
Shout out DuPont, shout out K Street. Also, yeah, no, that's exactly what Matt was talking about, the Project for a New American Century. We have an episode on it. Do check it out. We're not saying these things are inherently bad, right, the same way a weapon is not inherently bad. It depends upon on the tree. Yeah, the aims of the operator, the literal aim, you know, where it's pointed.
Imagine you're a president with all that stuff on your shoulders, all that pressure. Okay here, president, right, You shoulders are big, dude. You got to think about everything, right, and you're thinking about everything all at once, and.
You're starting to hunch a little bit bro, let us help you with this. Let us take some of this burden.
I don't have time.
To read, you don't have time to think. Bro, you just got to act.
If we gave you a tank, that would do it for you.
Blast your opponents, all right, tell me about the Middle East and three sentences.
Perfect, do that.
Yeah. So Heritage continued to gather power even when what we would call ideological opponents were in office. For instance, again we always say this, do not be fooled by the k fabe of American politics. During the Clinton administration, the Heritage Foundation took up with the idea of what we would call culture wars. We call it that today in the United States. So they needed something to get on Clinton aside from jobs, so they went for culture wars.
You know, maybe to nip this in the bud too, lest we at some point espouse a political opinion that might piss off one side or the other. I just want to point out, and I think we're on the same page. I don't trust either side, and I think either side serve very similar masters. And it's sort of
one you know, it's like a puppet show. I really do truly believe that to a degree, and I find the system of American politics to be inherently broken, and we're seeing more and more of that with what's happened with this move towards totalitarianism and this move towards the basic abolition of democracy. But I'm not saying I think Biden's the answer. I think he's as much of a shill as anybody. And it all kind of pisses me off and makes me want to throw my hands up in outrage.
If you really want to freak yourself out, go back to nineteen ninety two when the Heritage Foundation is working real hard on healthcare reforms in the name of it or in with the goal of giving Americans choice.
I will look get to it, look what actually got pushed, and look at what's contained within.
Yeah, I got it.
No, no, do the do the Bentrick with the two fingers, and then look at Hillary Clinton, look at Obama.
It's right right now, Let's give it right now. So during the Clinton administration, we got the Heritage Foundation, UH leveraging and deploying the concept of culture wars. They wrote a publication called Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, and it's sort of this argument disguised as science about how fourteen different variables like how life is worse due to democracy,
and the Clinton administration responded. They adopted Heritage policy recommendations, particularly in regard to welfare reform, and they fast forward through the second Bush. Yes, sorry, non Americans. One guy was president and was CIA till he died, and then his son also became president. I'm sure he was the best person objectively for the job.
He's one of the most fun presidents to.
Paintings. He's pretty good.
And at a time, I remember it was when I was first starting to get quote unquote maybe more politically radicalized, and I just thought he was the devil. But in retrospect, the guy's a teddy bear, you know, for a.
Guy from Connecticut. He does a killer Texas accent. Yeah, I just you know what I'm saying.
Though at the time, he just seemed like the worst possible thing for democracy and like the whole I mean everything about it. But now in retrospect it just seems laughably benign.
I would hang out.
I want to pat him on his head.
You know, when he's talking to the kids and the guy whispers to him about nine to eleven, I'm like, bless his heart.
I feel like we would have a lot of fun at David Busters dude.
For sure, drinking of cors Man.
I think he gave that up. But we do have to get to your original point, Matt, which is, uh, former President Barack Obama also followed the lead of the Heritage Foundation on particular policies, most notably healthcare. And then it was weapon the fact that that administration adopted a pretty uh objectively free market conservative approach to healthcare. You know, and the number one crime in the United States is
to be poor. Uh. The the ACA right as it's called, was weaponized into being called the Obamacare Act.
Right Affordable Care or Obama.
Wait, was that debated that on purpose? Or was it the other side?
No?
No, what I'm saying it feels like it was.
It was an attack.
It was an attack, thought, that's what I thought.
It's sort of like calling it the you know, the Chinese flu or what it was not a complement.
No, I didn't think.
So It's again, a lot of time goes by and it all compresses weirdly, and you start to kind of forget where some of these things come from, which is Orwell's whole point about language and the nature of rhetoric. It's really easy, as smart as you might be and as well read as one might be, to just accept these things and kind of forget where they came from.
And now it's twenty twenty four. Yep.
Just call it the Heritage Consumer Choice Health Plan.
Or one of the original names.
Yeah, or the Bill Clinton Health Initiative alternative.
For the people. Guys, don't make me be that person who sees the Christian Bible and says, I like the earlier work. Whatever. Heritage Foundation is a powerful organization and as always as anything tank worth its salt should, it has a plan, and now more than ever, thanks Fox News, the opponents of Heritage are worried about this think tanks plans for the future of the American experiment. So what exactly is Project twenty twenty five? What does it propose
are the opponent's right to be concerned? We'll tell you after a quick word from course, here's where it gets crazy, the Project twenty twenty five stuff. It depends on whom you ask. There are people who will dismiss it as a pipe dream, you know. There are people who will say it is an existential threat to the concept of democracy.
But if you look at the papers, if you look at the policy, which is freely available online, you will see that Project twenty twenty five, by its own words, assumes some very high stakes for the authors of it. They are the last line between tyranny and you know, whatever their halcyon vision of America would be, which does not include you.
If you're listening, Oh man, well, guys, like, what is a conspiracy if not just a plan that doesn't include you?
You know what I mean?
It's sort of hatched in secrecy. But a lot of these ones that are hashed in secrecy you can read about them. There's information out there about them. You just don't have the equipment or the know how or you know, the information to decode what they're actually going for in certain senses. And I feel like that's what this is.
Like.
This stuff is technically out in the open, but it feels like a conspiracy to me.
I don't know.
Well, yeah, it really is fully out in the open. You can go on their website and read all about it. You can go on BBC News or PBS or any of these other places, Fox News, CNN, and they'll tell you all about the specific policies that we're going to get into and they I just I cannot re emphasize enough Ben that when you read through it, those stakes could not be higher. I'm just I agree with you wholeheartedly.
It seems in it's some of it seems intense. The hope as we go through all of this stuff and we learn about it is that whoever is president next will only adopt one or two.
Right, Yeah, there's a rule of attrition. They've baked in the idea that not all of this will work as opposed to that what third you said that the Reagan administration adopted two? Yeah, two seconds. Okay, So the idea is, the idea is you hope for one or two and everything else is bonus credit because if you structure it correctly, then getting the right one or the right to will make to do the rest of the job.
And that's just to twelve years down the road.
Right, because we got skulledas now it's chess, right, I mean it really is.
Well, you know, we're we're scared of these people in many ways, but also I got to applaud their tenacity and their their their forward thinking.
You know, it's it's kind of something to behold Forward Thinking is a podcast on the Iheartrangio. Oh yeah, that's true, it's true.
But you know, you know what I'm saying though, It's like they're thinking so many steps ahead and they know they can only get X, Y or Z probably right away. But they it's all tiered, it's all designed with the future and mind, and that's not easy to do.
And in their defense, objectively, from their perspective, they do see it as a greater good. Yeah, in their opinion. So again we talked about this franchise of novels basically of policy papers. The one that people are referencing when they talk to you about Project twenty twenty five is a thing called Mandate for Leadership holand a conservative promise. Spoiler. It's about as long as the unabridged copy of The Stand by Stephen king On and on. Yes, sir, it's not as good as the Stand.
And I mean, we know parts of the unabridged Stand probably should have been abridged. But yeah, no, that's wild. And that's another thing. A lot of this is like they what is it like when when they don't an a legal team dumps all the documents on you at once, so that you are literally stuck sifting through all of it to find one or two things of value or of meaning in your defense, That to me feels like
a lot of what these overly long documents are. They're ensuring that the average individual is not going to take the time to read it, and if they do, it's going to be too complex and daunting for them to actually pull anything out that's that's you know, worth analyzing or discussing.
I feel you, man, I would say that they are not attempting to to obscure things through legal ease or through you know, arcane terminology. They are writing this for anyone who wants to read it. They're very upfront. You've got to give them credit where it's due. They're very upfront about what they want to do. If it is it's a conservative agenda for whomever happens to be the next Republican president.
And anyone in Congress who feels similar.
Yeah, anyone who's got a good vibe over on DuPont Circle, you know, join up.
But basically, here here is as we said, we're gonna use it. The term overtime a policy bible for everybody. If if there is someone who gets in office that would want to enact these policies. Hey, guys, you're on our team. Uh uh, this is the policy bible, so work towards these goals.
And what a back I want to back up on this. When the point about folks not reading things, it is it is written in an approachable way, but the assumption does seem to be that the majority of folks supporting one or two of the policy points have not read the whole thing. Yeah, I think that is correct.
Let's go back to just at that point. Ben in the year two thousand, the House Majority Leader Dick Army at the time, quote real name. He is quoted in the Heritage Foundation as saying, if candidates read nothing else, they should read issues. No candidate should run without it.
And he's referring to this thing that they wrote called issues, the Candidate's Briefing Book, which was a similar thing, not the exact same thing, as one of these mandates for leadership, which is a whole as you said, been a franchised Marvel universe of its own. It's a very similar thing that gave everybody a starting point and specific end goals.
Yeah. Yeah, executive summaries talking points isn't that weird. That isn't that weird that that would be the decider? You know, tell me about the Middle East, and three sentences says America.
How about two thousand pages?
Okay, okay, I'll read the first three sentences they say. So audits website right now, you can go to Project twenty twenty five and you will see they would love to give you a pdf. They would love to give you a copy of Mandate for Leadership, a conservative promise. They will also tell you that this handbook, as they call it, is quote the next conservative president's last opportunity to save our republic credit where due. This is is
the brainchild of many, many people. Some of the thought leaders in this one are folks like Mark Meadows, who used to be chief of staff at the White House. Stephen Miller, who is famously a diplomatic.
Yeah not my friend Dick, Not my friend Stephen Miller that I grew up with. This is a different guy.
Yeah, yeah, different.
Well, Steve, you were big.
He was big in the early Trump administration because he was on TV all the time, just like as this kind of very acerbic, kind of young conservative, just talking point master. And I remember he would get real salty on some of these shows, and real righteously indignant and like singing Trump's praises and calling him a genius and all of this stuff.
I just don't I just don't think you're a good white nationalist if you take money from Saudi's.
Oh well, that's the thing though, right, Like a lot of this the flag waving of white nationalism and all of these ideological things, nine times out of ten are just smoke, you know, to appeal to certain voter bases, whomever there might be. I don't think a lot of these politicians believe much of anything.
That's It's so let's go to the director of Project twenty twenty five, as we record on Friday, June twenty First, he's a guy named Paul Dans And I know some of us have a thing about people with two first names, but that is his real name. It's not as cool as Dick Army. But his name is Paul Dan's and he used to work as the chief of staff for the Office of Personnel Management in the administration of former
President Donald Trump. And the handbook itself Project twenty twenty five does not, to be clear, it does not directly assume that Donald Trump will be a messionic figure, it says, any any conservative president, right, and to also follow through on that logic. If Joe Biden got re elected and totally went on board with Heritage Foundation, they would say he's a great guy.
Yeah, they would. Well, let's say there's an all out war that begins immediately or very soon after the president is almost elected, or maybe right after they're elected. Adopting some of this stuff would I don't know what would make for a good movie version of reality.
You're talking about the Golden goose. You're talking about the real thing.
Somebody actually just grabs the reins in this way because quote, we're under attack.
I mean like a coup, like a legitimate no.
I feel like it's Independence Day, it's ID four, and you know whatever, we're under attack and somebody's got to hold the reins and just make all the decisions. And you know.
Why's it got to be us?
Though? Right?
I guess that's my question is like who, It's just a matter of who seizes it, right, who takes it and runs with it?
Well, I'm not well, I guess what I'm saying in ninety four, I'm imagining the speech that the president of that movie gives built pullman, I.
Think, bizarre but independent state.
But what I'm saying is somebody, the president in this case of the United States, stands up and says, guys, I've got this. I'm seizing executive control.
Hyeah, I got you, I got you. That's the golden Goose, the unitary theory, and it's a dangerous thing. And make no mistake. Project twenty twenty five is essentially to the
earlier reference about comic books and films. It is an Infinity War level crossover Heritage Foundation and Project twenty twenty five is like that moment in The Avengers where Captain America is at the end of his row open is you know, his shields all messed up and and all of a sudden, these doctors, strange portals open out and nowhere and all these other In this case, conservative think
tanks join the fray. It is a coalition. Project twenty twenty five is a coalition of hundreds of interrelated think tanks. And I would argue they are all pursuing neo feudalism.
Are the tax exempt Well think about it, Well, I'm just I mean, is it like being a nonprofit like, do they I know they must have to be designated as that. Do they have some benefits some tax loophole benefits in order to do they? Are they registered in I'm sorry if I didn't mean to derail.
No, No, it's case by casey because it depends upon it depends upon the specific demographic of the think tank. Is it private industry? To your point? Is it not for profit? Is it nonprofit? Is it a loose coalition of academics you know who are still pissed about the free market?
Because because an NNGO could technically also be a think tank, right, associated think tanks?
Yeah?
Absolutely, guys. The Heritage Foundation is a five oh one C three organization, just as Akato Institute is. Hey are many of these nac Yeah?
Hey you can donate now, yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Do you have five million dollars?
You could take a dollar? Yeah, we'll take one dollar and then we'll send you mail for the rest of your life. And weird texts. Uh. The The Heritage Foundation Excuse Me Project twenty twenty five also notes some wild stuff.
But I want to get back to the thing you said right before we talked about taxes. What did you say, neo feudalism, Ben, what can you just describe what you mean by that?
Fiefdoms?
Right, it's like political fiefdom I mean, I think.
Yeah, one hundred percent. It's the idea of replacing the Great American experiment with something closer to monl lords. Yes, got it.
Yeah, they just want a king again.
Yeah, which is what George Washington legendary pill shout out Shane Gillis. George Washington was correct when he refused monarchy. And there are some people in his crew that really love this idea of using Kinglee terms and throwing him around,
and he flatly rejected it. And if I could just take this moment to recommend listening to the Ridiculous History episode with AJ Jacobs about the Constitution and his book on living Constitutionally and crazy, crazy thing that this guy did and wrote a book about it, basically to get to what the letter of the intent of the Constitution was. And a lot of things we're talking about today come up in that episode.
So give it a listen. I think it'd be a good supplement to this conversation.
Aj Bahamas Jacobs The Year of Living Constitutionally. He also has a show with us called the Puzzler. You can hear some surprising cameos, including Roywood Junior, Michael Ian Black. He's just a delightful, very sharp guy, and he's also concerned about this idea because the thing about monarchies is if you are the monarch, you love that system. Right. If you are going back to some of our earlier episodes recently, if you are the land lord, then you
love a land lord system. Project twenty twenty five also notes the following quote, It is not enough for Conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next concernervative administration. That is the goal of the
twenty twenty five Presidential Transition Project end quote. And as we'll see later, it's low key hilarious that they're using the word transition in particular.
Yeah, yeah, more more like seizing, right the Yeah, transition has nothing to do with it, like what we saw with the insurrection.
This is the idea of rejecting transition, is what it is.
Yeah, that's a radical left term.
If you have me. Yeah. Also, like as we're saying earlier, this project, you, if you sit through this unabridged policy version of the stand, what you're gonna find is that it's if we're listening tonight, If we're listening tonight and we feel that we are ourselves maybe more conservative, fiscally, socially, whatever, you will be surprised, fellow conspiracy realist, by how hyper
conservative Project twenty twenty five is. I can say with certitude, no matter how you feel when you're listening right now, you will find something in this document that you think is super up. Because it is a blue sky, messy spaghetti bowl of ideas that don't always agree with each other. They're trying to upend norms and institutions, and to the earlier points we made, they are assuming that they only need a few of these to get through and become laws.
I mean, let's look at the specific goals.
Ben. I think about this as for some reason, a shotgun and like bird shot round that sprays really wide with tiny little balls, But in this case, it's like busshot sized balls inside the amount that you would get with a bird shot round.
It's the literal spray and pray method, you know, I mean, I mean sorry.
But let's wait for a second. Here a word from our sponsor, and then get into these specifics.
So the Project twenty twenty five document this Leadership or Thought Leader novel. It generally has four pillars, right, because it echoes in some ways the structure of religious thought. So the first pillar is to quote restore the family as the centerpiece of American life. What do we think that means? Can we hear that whistle?
Yeah?
And I choked on it, I mean, ever choked on the little thing inside a whistle, and then all of a sudden you're just whistling every time you breathe.
That's what's happening. Okay, well it happens. It happens delightfully in cartoons.
But yeah, dude, the idea, Yeah, it's it's it's inherently dog whistley the American life. The family. Families mean so many different things these days, and and and this idea of the heritage version of the family. Think about the families of old you know, husband, wife, you know Johnny, Jenny, you know, well that too. But that's the thing though, all of its illusion, all of it's a fantasy. You know, the husbands were cheating left and right. There is abuse
going on, you know, horrible things. It's there's no magical golden time where the family was this perfect unit of existence. But what this means is getting rid of any kind of queer uh you know, elements in families, you know lgbt Q I plus just burn it with fire, kill it with fire.
It's uh yeah, now, hold on, does it say that specifically in there that the family is a man, a woman, kids, and a but there.
Are because of the elements that can unfilteredly spew that kind of stuff as talking points, and that's what gets people on board. And then they're they're kind of tacitly supported because no one's saying that that's wrong.
It's also yeah, it's it's a culture war piece, right. And the second pillar is the idea of dismantling institutions and norms, which just you know, if you have ever spent time in Latin America or the continent of Africa, when that stuff goes sideways, it escalates quickly. It is very important to remember that, you know what I mean, Libertarian, conservative, Green Party, Democrat, whatever, you kind of need that stuff
to happen. You need the roads to work, you need the light switch to turn on, you need to be able to drink the water or Project twenty twenty five aims to dismantle a lot of the I would say, the circulatory system the anatomy of the American.
State, and replace it with what feudalism? Isn't that chaos? Isn't that anarchy? I just who's you know, who's in charge of the utilities, Like I don't understand like the basics of running the infrastructure. Where does that go to? You know, someone's got to run those administrations. And we know there are a lot of red tape and it's a pain in the butt to deal with. But it's at least you got someone, you know, you know who to call if your lights don't work.
That's a great point. I'm being a little hyperbolic. The idea is to eliminate some institutions like the Department of Energy, Education, Commerce, and then to make the Department of Justice sort of like a lag sock puppet, a place to replace the current federal employees civil servants with people whose only qualification is their ideological loyalty.
Yeah the word yeah, So this would eliminate a crap ton of jobs.
Well, well it would my understanding via the BBC. In a couple other places, they would remove protections like that you've got a good government job, you're protected in that position. They would remove the protections the shielding that let's say an individual government employee has, then that person could be fired and an appointee then like they're making it easier for an appointee system to be put in place where they literally bring in their own troops.
Basically that partation is your voting record.
That part of it's scary, But I will say there is something to be said of those protections yielding malaise and complacency.
We always talk about government jobs.
They're cushy, and you know you can never get fired, so you kind of just phone it in. So there is part of me that's like, maybe that could be reformed a little bit and maybe people would do a better job. But then the whole replacement part is where it gets real sticky and real politically to tintinuous.
Maybe you should be able to be a senator for eighty years, not with that attitude.
So stroke the midstroke, the third pillar here is the idea of defending what they would call the nation's sovereignty and borders, aka build physical walls and adopt adopt immigration policies that we could argue if we were the founding fathers are kind of against the constitution. Just not picking a side on this one. I'm just saying, if you read, you see the disagreements.
But one thing to add on the immigration reforms that they're hoping to put in place, or it's something we've talked about with other countries that are it's a system that's offered for other countries very often where if you have enough money, you can fast track your application. If you've got that premium dollar that you roll in with, you get an American citizenship. But everybody else who doesn't have that kind of premium money, it's way harder to get in YO.
I met a guy on a train in Spain or a couple. They're from New Zealand, and I asked them about the whole deal, where like, can you really fast track New Zealand citizenship by dumping a whole bunch of money into the economy And he was like sure enough, and he basically almost gave me a number, Like it's something that folks that live over there are like intimately aware of It.
Was very interesting conversation. Also, you're meeting people who are outside of their home country, which means that we can assume they're a little better off by a by capability of travel in that regard, and it is a known thing. To Matt's point, the idea of sovereignty and borders is very much a rules for thee, not for me situation across the world. It is, and it's only going to accelerate as as traditional climates migrate into further further inhospitable environments.
It is going to happen now very soon. The fourth pillar just going to leave that one there. Think about that one. The fourth pillar is Project twenty twenty five. Wants to secure what they would call God given individual rights to live freely. This translates to tax cuts for wealthy people.
Well, can we talk a little bit right now about this thing I brought up on a recent episode.
I can't remember it was.
It was not about this, but Trump has recently come out saying that he would eliminate the income tax and replace it with with tariffs like heavy tears. Isn't that sort of within this kind of conversation here, that idea of like being isolationist and you know, getting rid of like these taxes that we have to pay, giving us big old tax cuts or again to your point, probably more likely the super wealthy and passing that on to
other countries that we do business with. But it's kind of inherently flawed and would cause the whole system as it currently exists to collapse under its own weight.
I'm just going back in time, guys, thinking about the North American Treaty. What is NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Trade Agreement agreement that was isn't that Clinton administration? Maybe it's before that. I thought that was Clint administration, But that the concept of open free trade right where it's it's easier to do business, it's better for the corporations, versus that kind of system that you just described, where it's way worse for the corporations, but it's better for
the individuals who maybe own the corporations. Which is an interesting battle like ideological battle happening, but in the end, the same people benefit.
Dun Dun dun, dun, dun, dundun, dundun.
Moves within moves, but Devil's advocate. Wouldn't we also, as the individuals who are not corporate shareholders and benefits well think? Nor would those tariffs ultimately get passed on to us in terms of the increase in price of consumer goods.
We are the great battery the consumer, right, each one of us. We are buying the stuff that is being manufactured that tariffs are being placed upon the ular.
Sorry, it's just no, no, don't apology.
So we might say, so we might save something by not having to pay as much tax, but we're gonna end up paying it somewhere down the line eventually, no matter what.
We'll feel so good because we're paying the man less. But then we're like, oh crap, this twenty five dollars can of cours?
How much get a can of cors possibly costs? Matthew, I say that we proposed a new currency system. You can have regular dollars or you can have premium dollars. Because we use the word premium earlier. So why don't we go America plus? Yeah, you know what I mean. Now you've got now, you've got your dollar plus, you got your five dollar plus.
And whatever Saudi Arabia is trading oil in now, Hey.
It's double plus. I'm good. Oh we missed our strange news. We had such good conversations about it. Oh, we could never go to Saudi Arabia again. So first, as we mentioned earlier, twenty twenty five, Project twenty twenty five calls for fiery thousands of unelected civil servants hashtag nerds or as you said, in some cases, it's true people just running the clock down for their pension. Project twenty twenty
five also does hate the idea of pensions. The idea of firing these people or the logic is that they.
Are somehow.
Allied with a deep state. And the problem is, and Project twenty twenty five recognizes this. The problem is that those positions, those civil servant positions which are unelected are mission critical to the function of the United States in terms of both statehood and in terms of business domestic and abroad. So they have to replace them with someone They're going to replace them with people whose qualifications are entirely ideological. That just seems real sketch to me.
It's like when Elon does in and took over Twitter and fired all those like crucial key workers, and then all of a sudden, the systems broke because he just left these whole departments that were, you know, mitigating some of the horrible content that was on there and like you know, being gay keepers for the kind of stuff that was allowed to flow through all of a sudden that just wasn't happening, and then they were surprised to find that the system broke down.
I'm sorry.
I was using business as a microcosm of like what we're talking about here.
I want to add something that Mike Wendling wrote pretty recently in the BBC about this and its notes on his notes on Project twenty twenty five's adjustments to climate, the way the government handles climate issues as well as economic issues that we're talking about here in those government jobs, and how that's all interconnected and what Trump recently said. Okay,
just really quickly, Yeah, he says. The paper sets out two competing visions on tariffs and is divided on whether the next president should try to boost free trade or to raise barriers to exports, but the economic advisors, writing within Project twenty twenty five suggests that a second Trump administration should slash corporate and income taxes, abolish the federal Reserve, and even consider a return to goldbacked currency. So it really is exactly what we're talking about here. It is divided.
But to hear a presidential candidate who is currently campaigning for that position again basically put forth and say, hey, this is what I want to do, and it's the exact thing that's written and described here by the BBC, that's written in Project twenty twenty five, it is pretty striking.
I would say, one hundred percent. You know, like any Bible, it doesn't necessarily agree with itself. Here is also the golden goose of the thing. Right, The main reason or the main reason in the United States that powerful people will fund a given candidate is because ultimately they want control of the court. You know. At the very top
they're supreme. Yeah. Yeah, at the very top there are nine kind of ring wraiths who never have to leave until they die and what they say goes, and they are in charge of their own oversight, which is gross and weird and stupid.
They've already been stacked in a particular direction that's going to have implications for you know, many many years to come.
Yeah.
They're also in charge of keeping those private plane trips quiet.
Hey you said you wouldn't talk about it. So here's the golden goose of Project twenty twenty five. Just the same way that the ultimate goal of any political party in the US is to control Scotus, the ultimate goal of Project twenty twenty five is to execute something we will call u unitary executive theory in a hyper hyper idealized way. The concept is that if you are president, you control everything under the executive branch. There are three
branches in American government. The executive branch is low key a big deal. So this means that if you're president, you automatically control the Department of Justice, hire and fire at will right a point, or de appoint. You could scuttle investigations. You can see how this would be convenient if you were, just, for a hypothetical example, a president of the United States with some heavy federal charges dogging you.
What about the thing that I always remember from early Civics class, the idea of checks and balances?
Does that always go out the window?
Is this like the goal here is to like kind of remove those checks and balance says and have the president be acting completely autonomously and just you know, single that unilateral right?
Is that right? With the assumption that the war branch is on three fronts. So if you control the judiciary, right, the judicial branch, and you are the god of the executive branch, then all you need to do is get the legislative branch to play ball.
And if they're all in your corner politically speaking, and they couch out to everything you say, and then you've got that locked.
Well, yeah, and everybody's got a Bible that you can reference. Just go to page twelve.
Oh, that's a good one. That's a good pitch. Check out the footnotes. The fire footnotes are amazing. One of the key things here that a lot of people miss again is the removal of certain government institutions. I get it. Paying taxes sucks. Okay, it's not. The wealthy people don't really pay taxes. Is just for we the poor, the vast majority of the United States and this crazy experiment. But the reason we have to play this game is
because it's like being in a country club. Right. The idea is that you pay some dues and you receive certain things. So the idea of cutting things like the Department of Education, it's machavelian to the level of taking the courts right, Like if you remove and I'm getting Overwellian here. If you remove the ability to articulate and understand a concept, then you have disabled people. They will not be able to synthesize information. It's evil, it's brilliant.
It's some real snake in the garden stuff.
Comply, comply, they sure will comply for you.
Obey, consume right, they live.
Yeah, they'll. I'll enjoy that big Mac in that cores well.
But big Macs are three x the cost they used to be though, Like, I mean, seriously, I saw a table of like fast food prices, which I think is a good metric of inflation because they used to be like the value menu and things were ninety nine cents.
That isn't even a thing anymore.
Now they call it the like there's another name for it that it's no longer like the ninety nine cent value menu or whatever. But I mean literally, the cost of a big Mac is like practically five or six dollars, and it used to be just like, you know, three Maybe.
The dollar store is selling things that are over a dollar.
So what do we visible store? I guess my questions. We're still paying taxes out the wazoo, and there's prices are going up and a lot of jobs. You know, people are fighting for unionizing so that they can ensure that they get these cost of living increases, because that's not guaranteed either.
What are we getting, Like, I.
Don't really understand where the trade off is even happening.
Well, there is a there is under this proposal a deputized national guard that can invade non compliance states like within what Yeah, that's like Civil Wars.
Yeah, there's this movie that came out called Civil War. Yeah, watch it.
There's an excellent novel by our pal Robert Evans, good friend of the show, called It Could Happen Here, and it is a continuing podcast as well. Please do check it out.
Oh man, I could wasn't it? Wasn't that a Sinclear Lewis book two way back in the day. I think I have that one. It Can Happen Here, and it's all about this exact kind of thing. But I'm okay, I want to read just so you really get this. Go right now, if you've got your phone, if you've got a computer near you, go to Project two zero two five dot org slash policy. Just go there, okay, and you will see You'll see Policy Policy Agenda. And this is the short paragraph we're you're just going to
read it verbatim. This is about that book that been described Mandate for Leadership, the Conservative Promise. Quote. This book is an invitation for you, the reader, mister Smith, missus Smith, and miss Smith to come to Washington or support those who can. Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained and prepared conservatives to go to work on day one here. It is to deconststruct the administrative state.
Yeah. Also go to Project while you're there, go to Project two zero two five dot org Forward Slash Playbook. Oh, and that'll give you a direct link to Mandate for Leadership, the Conservative Promise. It's all about the one hundred and eighty day period after an election, which is very big here in the United States. Look, we know it's weird, fellow conspiracy realist, we get that it's stupid. Uh, these
are strange rules, but they are being weaponized. I would say the most dangerous thing, and even you know, the the why did you do this thing is the concept of the culture war. This document aims to erase language. It mandates the idea of removing terms like sexual orientation or diversity, or gender equality, or even abortion or reproductive rights from all federal laws and regulations. Like Orwell said, it is removing ability to think about a thing and to articulate that thing.
It is what does mean for those communities that are that those things that are directly represent and that are in a fight to attain or continue to have access to those things.
Is just the case idea.
It's a those communities, you don't exist as far as we're concerned. Your struggles do not exist as far as we're concerned.
And here's the con here's the GAF, here's the grift. The people proposing that kind of culture worse stuff. For the large part, they do not care. The idea is that you find someone who is desperate and you hook them in with a tribal identification of some sort, and then by getting them in the door with that, they will follow all your other stuff. So the people who are proposing this, and again just a political this is
a genuine objective point. People who try to take you in or shepherd you in with this kind of rhetoric window dressing. What they really want to do is to have a loyal follower for fiscal policy that one hundred percent will not benefit you if you are most American people. All right, let me get off the soapbox.
Here, quick recommendations that it's popping right now. The new season of the Boys really starts to get into some of these types of political machinations. It's just dropped, like first three episodes are out and it's it's dark as all get out, and four I think maybe yeah, and it's it's very very good and very dystopian and deals with a lot of these kind of themes that we're talking about here.
I love that show me too.
Here's the scary thing. This is where we end. And folks, we know that people have political sensitivities. Obviously we're not
attacking anyone. We're walking through again a wish list of stuff that if one hundred percent of it is enacted, it is bad for democracy, regardless of who wins the next election for president and arguably Congress folks are more important than a president any in this model, right with unitary ex Yeah, the thing is that no matter what happens, any single Project twenty twenty five proposal would immediately be challenged in court. The thing is, if you already own
the courts, who gets to make the call. I mean, the reason they be challenged is because they are fundamentally uncoonritutional, un American. I would say, they're not part of the vibe, and we have to face it as a Western civilization. There's a very young experiment. It's very hold my beer. America is crazy and scary. It always has been. You know, it's always Halloween in America. There's a reason that this country is the world's leading exporter of horror films. It's
because people are, you know, freaked out right. So the idea is that if any anybody takes up a couple of these policies, they will trigger a snowball effect, right, a domino reaction. And again, like our earlier examples with the Clinton administration, the Obama administration, the Biden administration, the thing is, it is a very very good offer. If you were president, the idea of unending executive power. You know, you are beyond impeachment, you are beyond you are literally
beyond justice. Don't be fooled. Don't think it's just Republicans that would do that.
Yeah, it only has to happen one time, right, and then you don't have elections anymore, or there's a potential to lose the ability to elect you know, your team or the other team, because you only need two teams, right anybody.
Russia has elections every couple of years. The numbers are wild.
Oh hey, did you know if North Korea or Russia goes to war, now the other one is obligated to go to war as well. Isn't that interesting?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah yeah. And also, a president unimpeachable is no longer a president by definition. Instead, it becomes a fascist at template, Messiah, a monarch. Dare I say, how an American a king at least authoritarian, right at the very least.
Well, do you think, though, they would keep a semblance of some kind of light democracy in place to appease some folks?
You know, again, Russia has some bangor elections.
That's what I'm saying. You know, I just don't think they would. I think it would be too much of a of a jarring change. Dare we say transition lol, to like just completely eradicate the elections as we know it, So it would be a slow burn kind of I think the way it would ultimately take place, it would be kind of teered and you know, Oh no, no, we'll still have these elections.
You can still vote for your local officials.
You know, to give the semblance of that umami of democracy while functionally obliterating it for all intents and purposes on a larger federal scale.
Check out our upcoming episodes on election monitoring. If you enjoyed this one, check out also our episode on the history of artificial flavors upcoming on Ridiculous History. Have we mentioned fun at parties? I think it must be said. Here's the question, though, really, just objectively, what president Democrat Republican at all would have the integrity to pass over the chance at such enormous power. This is the ring of souron kind of situation, and that remains the danger
since seventeen seventy six to twenty twenty four. This is the stuff they don't want you to know. We look forward to your thoughts. We try to be easy to find online. That's right.
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I don't know.
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