By Andra Watkins
Project 2025 is a masterclass in crafting propaganda. While my expertise lies in deciphering its Christian Nationalist language for the masses, the document routinely presents debunked conservative ideas as facts. (For example, “the Russia hoax.”) And who do P2025’s authors blame for connecting 45 with Russia? Largely, the media/the press and the public.
Specific examples of (Department of Justice) corruption, such as the Russia collusion hoax, will need to be tackled, exposed, and addressed head-on. This will require not just winning in a court of law, but also demonstrating culpability to the public and the media in a concrete and non-refutable manner. These efforts will require commitment and willpower, but they will be essential to restoring the trust of the American people.
Project 2025, page 557
For the balance of the week, we will explore different ways Project 2025 attacks a free press. I’ve already written about its call to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose programming includes National Public Radio.
Americans today experience the failures of political and cultural elites in countless ways: in the job market and in the grocery store checkout lines, on the streets and in our schools, in the media and within our institutions…This book—and Project 2025 as a whole—will arm the next conservative President with the same kind of strategic clarity, but for a new age.
Project 2025, page 3
When Republicans invoked the phrase political and cultural elites, they used to mean woke liberals. Growing up in Christian Nationalism, male authority figures regularly railed against the “liberal media” and encouraged us to rely on information they endorsed. As early as elementary school, I was taught various talking points to debunk mainstream media narratives. Until Fox News came along, all media was suspect.
Right-wing propaganda-as-news didn’t solely revolutionize the media landscape; it also changed the meaning of political and cultural elites. When Project 2025’s authors use this phrase, they don’t exclusively mean liberals. They also include Republicans-In-Name-Only (RINOs), moderate Democrats and independent voters, and the vast majority of Libertarians. Anyone who disagrees with them or challenges their “alternative facts” is a political and cultural elite, or “the enemy.”
The Office of Communications, which operates under the Director of Com-munications, conveys the President’s agenda to the public through various media, including speeches and remarks, press briefings, off-the-record discussions with reporters, and social media.
Project 2025, page 29
Newer readers may not be familiar with the term the President’s agenda. Throughout P2025, the importance of the President’s agenda is used to justify gutting the federal government, mass-deporting immigrants, implementing a Christian Nationalist cultural agenda, and more. It is the phrase that transforms the President into a dictator/king.
Operational functions of the Office of Communications include scheduling and running press briefings, interviews, meetings, media appearances, speeches, and a range of other events. The Office of Communications must maintain robust relationships with the White House Press Corps, the White House Correspondents’ Association, regional stakeholders, and key interest groups. No legal entitlement exists for the provision of permanent space for media on the White House campus, and the next Administration should reexamine the balance between media demands and space constraints on the White House premises.
Project 2025, page 29
Their first avenue for total control of information? Only allow media outlets and their reporters onto the White House campus if they agree to convey the President’s agenda. All other media will be denied access with the excuse of “not having space.”
The best resource for the Office of Communications is the President. The Pres-ident conveys the White House’s overall message through one or two inaugural addresses, State of the Union addresses, speeches to Congress, and press conferences. The office must also ensure that the various White House offices disseminate a unified message to the public. The Communications Director and Press Secretary in particular should be careful to avoid contradicting the President or delivering conflicting information.
Project 2025, page 30
During 45’s first (and we hope only) term, we saw what disseminating a unified message to the public resembled. How many times did Sean Spicer or Sarah Huckabee Sanders deny that the President said something, even when it was shown to them as irrefutable? How often were they combative and dismissive of reporters who pushed them for answers? It was often a bad look, but 45’s henchmen always fell in line.
The framers of Project 2025 have dealt with the problem of a combative press.
Journalists will be granted access to the White House only when they submit questions for approval in advance. They will be told what they can and cannot ask the President and his staff. And they will be expected to recount all answers in glowing verbatim, even when they contradict proven facts.
