David A. Graham on What Project 2025 Wrought
The Al Franken Podcast
The Al Franken Podcast
4.6 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In just 138 pages, David covers the entire 920-page document. He explains how many of the authors of Project 2025 saw Trump's first term as a failure because he was stopped from accomplishing his core goals - like building the border wall and repealing Obamacare. The answer was to create a shadow administration that would guide his policy decisions if he made it back to office.
We run through a variety of issues that are being influenced by Project 2025, including immigration and border security, education, and trade. And we discuss the most influential figure, Russell Vought, current Director of the Office of Management and Budget. One of his main priorities? Inflict pain on government employees.
Plus, Al remembers his friends, Rob and Michele Reiner.
READ David's book, “The Project”: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/800230/the-project-by-david-a-graham/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The weather. Tomorrow, expect a biting cold front. Hmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be |
| 0:06.8 | wearing or taking off. The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain |
| 0:13.0 | that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will rise slowly but surely reaching |
| 0:18.7 | their peak in the afternoon. |
| 0:23.0 | Not in the mood for miserable weather? |
| 0:25.6 | Fly cheaply to Turkey with Sun Express. |
| 0:28.7 | Sun Express, nonstop sunshine. |
| 0:36.4 | Hey everybody, we've got a great one today. |
| 0:40.3 | You know, for a change, David A. Graham of the Atlantic joins us on his book, The Project, how Project 2025 is reshaping America. I can't say I enjoyed the book. |
| 0:49.8 | A lot of what the project's authors wrote in their 920-page document has been adopted |
| 0:57.0 | and is in no small part responsible for the scary state of our country today. |
| 1:04.1 | But David has created a helpful guide that covers it all in just 138 pages, immigration, health care, the attack on our |
| 1:16.1 | federal workforce, the corruption of the Justice Department, and in general, Trump's disregard |
| 1:22.2 | for the norms that our nation's leaders have respected in the past. |
| 1:34.2 | For example, he's impounded hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for projects that Congress has appropriated and has been signed into law. |
| 1:37.2 | Most for projects intended for blue districts around the country. |
| 1:41.4 | But Trump and his Office of Management and Budget have withheld |
| 1:44.8 | the funding. Illegal? Sure. But Trump will go to his Supreme Court expecting a 6-3 vote. |
| 1:55.8 | Well, it's been a terrible week of the shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia, targeting Jews, celebrating |
| 2:04.8 | the first night of Hanukkah, the shooting at Brown University, and the unspeakable |
| 2:11.5 | murder of my friends, Rob and Michelle Reiner. I'd like to tell you a bit about Rob, who I'd known for 50 years. By now, |
| 2:24.4 | you no doubt have heard a lot of tributes to Rob as a director, the extraordinary breath of |
... |
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