Even if Trump Doesn’t Read It

According to CBS News on December 1, 2021, "On most days, Trump's PDB [Presidential Daily Briefing] comprised three one-page items describing new developments abroad, plus brief updates of ongoing crises in the Middle East.

"The goal was to make the PDB shorter and tighter, with declarative sentences and no feature-length pieces.

“Though the PDB was published every day, Mr. Trump only received an oral briefing two to three times a week, when ‘he relied on the briefer to orally summarize the significance of the most important issues" the account states’…”

The man is evidently not a big reader.

According to the Project 2025 website:

“Project 2025 is a historic movement, brought together by over 100 respected organizations from across the conservative movement, to take down the Deep State and return the government to the people. Its Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, published in April 2023, is a product of more than 400 scholars and policy experts from around the country. The book offers a menu of policy suggestions to meet our country’s deepest challenges and put America back on track, including:

•Secure the border, finish building the wall, and deport illegal aliens

•De-weaponize the Federal Government by increasing accountability and oversight of the FBI and DOJ

•Unleash American energy production to reduce energy prices

•Cut the growth of government spending to reduce inflation

•Make federal bureaucrats more accountable to the democratically elected President and Congress

•Improve education by moving control and funding of education from DC bureaucrats directly to parents and state and local governments

•Ban biological males from competing in women' s sports”

Lack of modesty notwithstanding (“a historic movement”), those bullet points sound exactly like what Trump was saying on the campaign trail.

So whether he’s heard about it, read it (c’mon, he has people for that, right?), or even happened to accidentally see one on a desk somewhere, if the question is whether he is going to implement its agenda, the answer is obvious.

—Stephen Macaulay