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RICK:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Rick Morton, this is 7am.

President Joe Biden has spent the last week trying to recover from a debate performance that’s been described as “calamitous” and “agonising”.

Audio Excerpt – Interviewer:

“Was this a bad episode or the sign of a more serious condition?”

Audio Excerpt – Joe Biden

“It was a bad episode… I was exhausted….”

RICK:

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.

Audio Excerpt – Interviewer:

“If you can be convinced that you can not defeat Donald Trump will you stand down?”

Audio Excerpt – Joe Biden:

“If the Lord almighty tells me that, I might do that.”

RICK:

And as Donald Trump’s lead in the polls widens, attention is now turning to the former President's potential agenda if he were to win another term, with one particular blueprint raising concern. It’s called Project 2025, and includes calls to expand presidential power, dismantle federal agencies and dramatically increase America’s military capability.

Today, senior researcher at The Australia Institute Dr Emma Shortis, on Project 2025 and why its author’s are threatening ‘a second American Revolution’.

It’s Monday the 8th of July.

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RICK:

Emma Shortis, the pressure for President Biden to pull out of 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 2.0 actually be different this time around, compared to Donald Trump's first go?

EMMA:

Rick, it's always, of course, difficult to predict anything about Donald Trump because he is such a loose cannon. 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.

Audio Excerpt – News Host:

“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 leaky last year, Axios published a piece entitled ‘White House Leakers Leak About Leaking’…”

EMMA:

And that is no longer true. They've really learned the lessons of particularly those early days of the Trump presidency. In fact, there are plans written by the Heritage Foundation and about 100 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.

Audio Excerpt – Kevin Roberts:

“What Project 2025 is trying to do is issue a corrective, a series of new deregulations, 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…”

EMMA:

Project 2025 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 1980s for the Reagan administration, where they handed Reagan the plan for a conservative policy agenda for the president that he went on to implement.

Audio Excerpt – Ronald Reagan:

“Tonight, I thank you. Heritage thanks you. And so does the conservative movement. But I can't help reflecting tonight on the fact that Heritage 10 actually exceeded its fundraising goal by 2 million dollars…”

EMMA:

Originally, I think you could have classified Heritage as a kind of traditionally conservative organisation, 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 fell totally out of favour 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 say the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 really dominating the kind of far right media universe in particular. So, Kevin Roberts, for example, who's that president of the 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’.

Audio Excerpt – Kevin Roberts:

“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.”

RICK:

Oh, it's a threat. It's absolutely a threat.

EMMA:

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 there are 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 2025. And you can see, particularly in the last week, they are increasingly convinced that they've already won.

RICK:

So what’s actually in the plan? Tell me about the details.

EMMA:

It's a 900 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 the 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'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 re classifies independent public 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.

RICK:

We spoke a lot about the domestic institutions that might be dismantled. I mean, we've always been told 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?

EMMA:

I think it's such an important question, Rick, because so often in Australia, we treat kind of the domestic political travails of the United States as separate to it’s 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, the plans are incredibly radical. You know, Trump has already been talking about his plans for China, for example, and putting up to 100% 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 2025 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 rethought.

Audio Excerpt –Donald Trump:

“That is why we will launch an all out campaign to eliminate America's dependence on China”

EMMA:

The reason is primarily that the forces behind Project 2025, 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 that the number of troops, for example, by up to 50,000 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 2025 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.

RICK:

After the break, how the man standing between the rest of the world and Trump, Joe Biden, is failing to ease worries about his age and capacity to lead.

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Audio Excerpt – Joe Biden:

“Making sure that we continue to support and strengthen our health care system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person…eligible for what I've been able to do with the…with the Covid…excuse me with, um…dealing with everything we have to do with…look…if…we finally beat Medicare.”

Audio Excerpt – Host:

“Thank you, President Biden.”

RICK:

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 that catastrophic debate performance recently.

EMMA:

That's right. You know, every time you 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.

Audio Excerpt –News Reporter:

“At a fundraiser 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.”

EMMA:

You know, if you go back to 2020 and the nominating process in the Democratic Party, there was a pretty extraordinary suite of young, diverse candidates, including Kamala Harris, who looked very much like the next generation of the Democratic Party. And part of Biden's, I think, pitch and his ability to win that nomination was his promise to be a generational bridge to that next generation, really, of diverse leadership in the 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.

Audio Excerpt –News Host:

“Amid the calls from some for President Biden to bow out of the race, former Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio says, Vice President Kamala Harris should replace Biden at the top of the ticket.”

EMMA:

Biden's dilemma, I suppose, is that if he does step aside, he needs to anoint a successor. He needs to make a, 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.

Audio Excerpt – Kamala Harris:

“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 think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”

EMMA:

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 sceptical 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 an acknowledgement that Harris is not a progressive saviour. You know, she was a prosecutor before she was the vice president and so you 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 mobilise that progressive base of the Democratic Party, particularly young people and people of colour, in a way that she would need to, to win a general presidential election. So I think there's a long way to go.

RICK:

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?

EMMA:

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 centre 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 a, you know, a personal relationship with the president in order to kind of carve out individual exemptions for Australia from the worst of the Trump policies.

RICK:

Remember the first time around when Trump was elected and Malcolm Turnbull didn't know how to get in touch with him so he used Greg Norman, the shark, the golfer, to like, just call Trump?

EMMA:

To call Trump directly, exactly right. And, you know, I think we can see a real effort on the part of the Australian 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 AUKUS submarine deal without, I think, a consideration of what keeping the AUKUS submarine deal in light of a potential Trump administration's approach to China, for example, might mean.

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 2025 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.

RICK:

Dr Emma Shortis, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.

EMMA:

Pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

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RICK:

Also in the news today…

The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has congratulated newly elected British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a phone call over the weekend. They reportedly discussed the economy, climate change and AUKUS and agreed to stay in close touch.

And,

Aunty Muriel Bamblett has been awarded Person of the Year at the National NAIDOC Awards. Aunty Muriel has been the CEO of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency for 25 years and was recognised for her ongoing advocacy of Aboriginal children and families.

This is 7am, I’m Rick Morton. See you tomorrow.

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