Trump's Project 2025: Up Close and Personal. Chapter 5: The Department of Retribution.
The Bill Press Pod
BP Pods
4.7 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2025
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While Bill is on a research and writing sabbatical for the next 4 weeks we decided it’s important to revisit the horrors we laid out in our Project 2025 podcast series, Trump's Project 2025: Up Close and Personal – and have the series author, pro-democracy advocate and the author of nine books, David Pepper, tie them to what’s actually happened so far. In Chapter 5, Part one, the fictional characters Congresswoman Louise Getty (a stand-in for Liz Cheney) and Senator Wade Stiller, former rivals, meet at the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. They reflect on their pasts and express concern over a hostile political climate under Trump’s second term, feeling fear and paranoia about being surveilled and targeted by the government. Their conversation reveals a sense of vulnerability as they confront the reality that many of their colleagues have abandoned principles out of fear. Louise recalls the intense political maneuvering and betrayals leading up to and following the January 6 insurrection.
In Part Two, Woody Nuxhall, the newly appointed head of the Treason and Political Crime Section of the DOJ, oversees his zealous young team of prosecutors, eager to pursue investigations and vendettas against political enemies. The group discusses tactics to surveil and undermine former colleagues and opposition figures, planning a strategy fueled by partisan loyalty and vengeance, while embracing a radical transformation of the DOJ's role in politics.
While these stories are fictional, they are based on Trump's own words and Project 2025.
We’d like to thank the artists who contributed their time to make this episode:
Richard Schiff and Morgan Fairchild who read the chapters and Jason Kravits, Tony Michaels, Jim Hilmes, Joe Walsh and Omid Abtahi contributed character voices.
Sound Design by Marilys Ernst and Jonathan Moser.
Trump's Project 2025: Up Close and Personal was written by David Pepper and Produced by Pepper, Melissa Jo Peltier and Jay Feldman and is a production of Ovington Avenue Productions and The Bill Press Pod.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, good friends. As I've said before, our American democracy is under siege today, |
| 0:12.8 | as Donald Trump and Elon Musk go about destroying our democratic institutions one by one. |
| 0:19.5 | Sadly, it's just what we warned about last September and October in our special podcast series on Project 2025 up close and personal, except it's happened even worse than we thought and quicker than we thought. |
| 0:34.4 | Following Project 2025, Trump and Musk have already done so much damage to government |
| 0:40.0 | agencies, to the courts, to the media, to foreign aid, to health care, you name it, and more. |
| 0:45.8 | It's hard to believe. And they insist, they brag about the fact that they're just getting |
| 0:50.8 | started. So we decided it's important to revisit the horrors we laid out |
| 0:55.5 | last fall in our Project 2025 podcast series and tie them to what's actually happened so far. Now, |
| 1:02.8 | here's what's scary. As you may recall, the podcast last fall about what might happen under Project |
| 1:09.0 | 2025 were fictional. Yet already already in just three months. |
| 1:13.9 | Many of those warnings have now come true, and you know what? More are sure to follow. |
| 1:19.5 | So for the next month, while I'm off on a research and writing sabbatical in Europe, |
| 1:24.3 | we're going to update our Project 2025 episodes to show how, under Donald Trump, |
| 1:30.0 | yesterday's feared fiction, has become today's dreaded reality. And once again, we'll be |
| 1:37.4 | joined by author of the Project 2025 series, former Ohio State Democratic Chair, David Pepper. |
| 1:44.1 | It's our hope, that's why we're doing it. |
| 1:47.0 | It's our hope that another look at the evil Trump playbook called Project 2025, |
| 1:52.0 | plus all the excellent reporting we've seen on the damage Trump's already done to our Democratic institutions, |
| 1:58.0 | will encourage even more people to stand up to Donald Trump, strengthen |
| 2:03.0 | our courage to resist, and lead to a total rejection of Trump and the anti-democratic MAGA |
| 2:09.6 | movement in 2026. Now, to help us understand what happens when the Department of Justice becomes |
| 2:16.2 | the Department of Retribution, |
... |
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