most of what Trump is doing right now consists of things he specifically disavowed during the campaign. i do disagree that this is aligned with Project 2025, though -- P2025 called for a major role for USAID! - ThreadSky

theophite.bsky.social • 15 hours ago

most of what Trump is doing right now consists of things he specifically disavowed during the campaign. i do disagree that this is aligned with Project 2025, though -- P2025 called for a major role for USAID!

Reposted from Chris Hayes

When you take a step back, it’s genuinely stunning how far any of this is from anything Trump campaigned on. It aligns perfectly w Project 2025 of course, but in terms of Trump’s public rhetoric, this was totally absent.

Comments

bastillesam.bsky.social•11 hours ago

USAID ain't completely dead. It's still an agency and they can definitely customize its use case in the future. Not so fast.

thermionic.bsky.social•9 hours ago

USAID can't actually function to perform work in the world without the many partner implementer organizations that it funds and oversees through grants and contracts, and DOGE are forcing most partners into bankruptcy. Many will cease to exist in the next 6mo, and have already fired/lost key staff.

bastillesam.bsky.social•9 hours ago

I am talking about the work P2025 has in mind for USAID.

thermionic.bsky.social•2 hours ago

That work is unachievable now. The recommendations made in P2025 for USAID were ideologically conservative but overall reasonable, and reflected a commitment to US soft power in the world. What has happened instead is total destruction of the mission and the ecosystem of partners that do the work.

whatfreshhellk.bsky.social•14 hours ago

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/14/us/politics/project-2025-trump-actions.html

spinozazsagabor.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Not too late on the usaid thing. They hobble it financially right before they put in their own people and turn the money faucet back on.

ronchica.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Um, did you read it? P2025 calls for all kinds of destruction of USAID. They’ve done it.

https://www.project2025.observer/

theophite.bsky.social•14 hours ago

ronchica.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Well, I guess there is a lot of wiggle room in the phrase “effective use”.

So maybe P2025 didn’t want a complete gut of the program, but it wanted control, as outlined by the pieces that have been implemented. I’m not sure there is a win for USAID in P2025.

https://www.project2025.observer/?agencies=USAID

conjurial.bsky.social•14 hours ago

the actual administration is Project 2025 after large doses of amphetamines

(who could be taking those I wonder)

prowhaledad.bsky.social•14 hours ago

wasn’t Project 2025 also pro PEPFAR?

theglassbeast.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Yes https://bsky.app/profile/mckay4senate.bsky.social/post/3lj27dp62h22c

various-threnodies.bsky.social•14 hours ago

it's darkly funny that even the super sinister Vought plan doesn't contemplate ending PEPFAR but Elon just did it

cultofsignal.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Elon wanting to inflict suffering on Africans?

tomhardly.bsky.social•14 hours ago

It mentions the success of a program by a previous Republican to tout a Republican doing something - further details in their plan talk about basically privatizing or handing off funding and physical responsibility of aid programs like PEPFAR to local governments instead:

theophite.bsky.social•14 hours ago

P2025 called for testing the waters on impoundment by selectively taking on politically unpopular liberal priorities and plausibly unconstitutional expenditures. the Trump administration hopes to impound at least a quarter of the budget.

davidevanlovett.bsky.social•14 hours ago

big 1942 energy here. strategic moves with a demechanized force.

weeznbeez.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Musk is in charge and he was never really aligned with P2025.

holgate.permanent.red•14 hours ago

P2025 was a long campaign, this is Leeeeroy Jenkins

holgate.permanent.red•14 hours ago

(And we have already seen how Brokedick Methbrain plays video games.)

scottlgreer.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Project 25 also had two fully specced-out and incompatible trade policies. A corporate one, and Navarro’s. Navarro’s obviously won so far but I don’t want to assume large companies are wholly disempowered yet.

jerubot.bsky.social•7 hours ago

This deviation could be explained by Elon personally hating us aid. He's alluded to it before and it makes sense given us aid opposed apartheid

dlwatkin.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Lots of it does line up though

fwordleproblems.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Yeah. All of this crap certainly shares a family RESEMBLANCE with "Project 2025" but that's because "destroying things" has a certain consistent vibe. Vandalism doesn't really require a book-length list of specifics.

efinkelnburg.bsky.social•14 hours ago

The dismantling of USAID seems like it’s specifically Elon being mad that apartheid ended

mitihati.bsky.social•14 hours ago

People may not be willing to admit that they voted for the wrong candidate. But they need to acknowledge that they were lied to. That’s a huge first step.

donthomas.bsky.social•4 hours ago

That is what makes it so crazy when his cronies say “This is what the American people voted for”. No they didn’t or at least this isn’t what you said to them.

chrislhayes.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Yeah good point

mrsdoubtwater.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Important to note that Project 2025 happened to be the perfect meeting point between the adversarial fascist MAGA and Musk/corporate wings, but this also means that the project largely got usurped by Musk and only the parts profitable to him are being executed.

mrsdoubtwater.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Like almost every agency that DOGE has targeted so far is directly related to some kind of investigation of Musk or his businesses. The USAID IG was investigating Musk’s Starlink shenanigans in Ukraine. That’s why it got targeted despite the P2025 recommendations.

mrsdoubtwater.bsky.social•14 hours ago

So yes, Trump had disavowed P2025, would’ve implemented some of it anyway, but Musk is the person who’s taking it completely out of the orbit.

mrsdoubtwater.bsky.social•14 hours ago

I don’t know if tariffs are mentioned in Project 2025, but Musk would sure love for the prices of European cars to go up! I seriously think we need to stop looking for either Trump’s or Heritage’s influence on policy. It’s all Musk.

emrosedeleon.bsky.social•13 hours ago

If it turns out that we save the republic largely on the basis of Trump genuinely never feeling bothered to either read a binder of step by step instructions, or if he's constitutionally incapable of taking direction, or if he's just too hollowed out and paid for by Putin and Musk.

apawhite.bsky.social•7 hours ago

Not particularly. Trump and the Republicans are doing Project 2025, but Musk is doing his own thing that mostly overlaps because the core of "break everything and give it to the wealthy" is the same but he's not beholden to anyone else's plan, partly because he thinks he's smarter.

permanentmajority.bsky.social•12 hours ago

mdavey10.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Why are we surprised by this? Trump lied over 30k in his first 4 years and Trump 2.0 is worse. The lies will keep coming.

drugdrawer.bsky.social•7 hours ago

https://soundcloud.com/elonmusk2025/foolish-lames-me?si=3f1c824904904a85873cc26f0a0583c0&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

invisiblelad7.bsky.social•14 hours ago

I think the unplanned aspects is Musk barging in and doing what he wants.

dasdoak.bsky.social•14 hours ago

This is part of why I think we're going to see people stab Musk in the back as his power ebs; the Heritage guys have *got* to be pissed that he's indiscriminately breaking everything. They still want to have a functional government that they can control at the end of the day.

bakerblue.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Agree-which will probably increase his rate of breakage-no ship to go back to..

dasdoak.bsky.social•14 hours ago

I think he doesn't even realize that he's breaking half the shit he is; a country where airplanes crash regularly and vaccines and cures for various cancers are unavailable is bad for him too.

bakerblue.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Maybe he really thinks he’s fixing thing things..he was pumping the “saving civilization “ thing for a quite awhile before this.. what’s a few crashes, or sick people if you’re the savior…

mrhortywho.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Yeah, Musk seems to be an unexpected wild card that they didn't plan on, and for some reason don't seem to be actively working against, at least not yet.

They're terrible people, to be sure, but a financially ruined, unstable country isn't good for them either.

dasdoak.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Victor-Frankenstein-ass organization still overcome with horror at the monster they've created.

smellbringer.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Don't insult the monster by comparing it to Elon, it was a very eloquent and compassionate creature by comparison.

That goes for the 1931 Universal version too.

dasdoak.bsky.social•13 hours ago

The only comparison I'm making is to Victor Frankenstein. I agree that the monster is far better a person than Elon - and also far better a person than Frankenstein, which is the whole point of the book.

various-threnodies.bsky.social•14 hours ago

it's like Project 2025 if we were doing it in a way to make people hate Project 2025 even more than they already did

shoutingboy.bsky.social•4 hours ago

Project 2025 was a whole lot of hard-working evil people saying “let’s come up with a step-by-step plan to transform America to our twisted vision.” Then a meth-fueled manchild came in and said “or I could just set fire to everything and post doge memes”

roninmacbeth.bsky.social•14 hours ago

Others have pointed out not just how evil these people are, but how much they seem to relish it. They want to be monsters, it's their raison d'etre.

wanderlib.bsky.social•14 hours ago

They will actively turn down opportunities to do evil more effectively if it enables them to revel in their evil.

various-threnodies.bsky.social•14 hours ago

They're going to absolutely shit themselves at the first real crisis where you have to actually manage & you can't just epic troll the libs

roninmacbeth.bsky.social•13 hours ago

COVID was a preview of that. They are going to kill thousands of people and laugh about it.

oafhunter.bsky.social•14 hours ago

It drives me nuts that people are talking as if he has a mandate!

kagiboran.bsky.social•14 hours ago

It’s Project 2025 but if you had to implement it on memory alone and put a drug addled lunatic in charge

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply