berg80
Diamond Member
- Oct 28, 2017
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Meet the think tank planning a second Trump administration. (It’s not Project 2025.)
Planning for a second Donald Trump White House has been years in the making.
Key members of the former Trump administration diaspora have been quietly poring over Biden administration regulations, interviewing hundreds of former officials, and drafting executive actions for the launch of Trump’s next term if he wins. The goal: Stand up a professionalized administration that can move quickly to undo President Joe Biden’s legacy, avoiding the chaos that bogged down the Trump team after 2016.
It’s not the high-profile Project 2025 initiative from the Heritage Foundation, which has drawn condemnation from Trump — and become a bogeyman for the left. The transition planning is coming, instead, from a different conservative think tank: America First Policy Institute.
That planning has taken place largely outside the official Trump campaign, whose own transition planning is months behind the schedule of his first bid for the White House. But Trump and top aides are aware of the outside effort, and many Republicans view it as a key supplement to the formal Trump transition effort, as long as it stays out of the spotlight — and avoids angering Trump.
The America First Policy Institute, filled with Trump loyalists and insiders, was blessed by Trump before it was founded in 2021. Its CEO, Brooke Rollins, has had a close relationship with Trump for years and has discussed the think tank’s transition plans with him, according to two people familiar with the meeting; this month, the former president named the group’s board chair, Linda McMahon, to co-lead the official transition team.
Is it happening because they know trump is a vapid tool who can't think for himself? Or because they know he doesn't care about the details of policy as much as going to rallies, being patted on the head, and gathering cabinet members so they can regurgitate the compliments trump's staff has written out for them?
The Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and America First Policy Institute appears ready to impose an extremist's wet dream wish list of initiatives designed to set the country back to the advantage of a narrow constituency of the rich and powerful.