Welcome to Talking Feds, a round table that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day.

I'm Harry Lintman.

Donald Trump has never been much of a poker player. He is incapable of finesse or

modesty and broadcasts to the heavens false and character flaws that other

politicians would try to mask.

Trump's brand of contempt and grievance operates most successfully along the fault lines of the most contentious social and economic issues in society where his supporters

burn with resentment at perceived hijackings of their just desserts. A long

blueprint for reactionary change should he win the election, Project 2025 lays out a return

to a perceived anti-deluvian American life with far greater involvement of religion, read Christianity,

and no officious federal bureaucrats to disturb the order.

It's all right there in black and white, but it doesn't seem to have moved the needle of American

voters, a scant percentage of whom have even read it.

No issue seems to strike a chord with the Trump faithful more than immigration.

He leads with confabulated accounts of mayhem on the Texas-Mexico border to crowds in New England and Michigan.

A centerpiece of the Project 2025 plan

is sealing the borders and ousting illegal aliens in this country

on a scale never before seen.

He engineered the defeat of a bipartisan proposal for immigration reform in Congress,

precisely to be able to campaign against Biden and a broken system.

Biden, who recently issued a tough on the border executive order to try to rest some of the rhetorical advantage from Trump,

this week tacked in the other direction,

with an order giving 500,000 alien spouses of American citizens

...