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[0] Former members of the Trump administration say that Donald Trump's presidency was hampered by too many entrenched bureaucrats working against his administration.
[1] Now the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 is hoping to have a team lined up that will make sure if he wins, he'll be able to fully implement a conservative agenda.
[2] In this episode, we sit down with a key member of that project, John McEntee, to discuss their strategy for a second Trump term.
[3] I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Bickley.
[4] It's Sunday, April 21st, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
[5] Joining us now is John McEntee, former assistant to President Trump, founder of the Right Stuff and senior advisor to the Heritage Foundation.
[6] John, thanks for joining us.
[7] First off, tell us what your role was in the last year of the Trump administration.
[8] In the last year of the Trump administration, I was the body man to the president, which is a travel aide that's with him 24.
[9] but I also took on an additional role, which was the director of the personnel office.
[10] So each president has political appointees in the executive branch about three to four thousand of them.
[11] And the personnel office is in charge of hiring and firing and moving those people around, everything from the Secretary of Defense to the scheduler in a random HUD office.
[12] All 4 ,000 political appointees go through this office.
[13] And yeah, we took that over in early 20 and did it for the remainder of the term.
[14] Did you fire a lot of people?
[15] We actually didn't fire that many people.
[16] You know, there are a few that quit and there were a few that had to be replaced.
[17] But for the most part, we were kind of thinking ahead on what a second term would look like and how to get everyone in the right position, find out who the best people were, who could take on more senior roles, and planning for a second term, which didn't come, but, you know, we may have the opportunity to do it this time.
[18] Right.
[19] And speaking of possible next time, Now you're working with Project 2025.
[20] That's with the Heritage Foundation.
[21] What is the goal of that project?
[22] Yeah.
[23] So Project 2025 is something at Heritage where we're looking at what happens after we win.
[24] A lot of Republicans win elections and then nothing happens.
[25] So it's always the dog that catches the car.
[26] And what do we do now?
[27] Project 2025 is coming up with a plan for what we do now when we win.
[28] There's two different aspects of it.
[29] Policy, which, I don't really have much to do with, and personnel, which is what we did at the White House.
[30] So staffing the next administration, who are the people we need, how do we find them, putting them into a database, vetting them, teaching them how to be effective political appointees.
[31] So this is important work, and getting a head start on this is just so important.
[32] In 2016, when we won, we had a very short window, and the Trump team didn't really have any experience in government.
[33] they relied on the D .C. network.
[34] And that kind of didn't serve us well.
[35] So what we're doing now is doing the planning now, getting a head start.
[36] So in 2025, we can hit the ground running.
[37] So some of that work is actually training people that you hope will be appointed.
[38] Yeah, it's teaching them how to be effective political appointees.
[39] So the biggest problem is people get these jobs and they don't know how to navigate the bureaucracy.
[40] They don't know what to expect.
[41] They buckle under media pressure.
[42] A lot of different things.
[43] There also wasn't a lot of coordination between the White House and the agent.
[44] We're trying to fix that, streamline it.
[45] We tried to do that when we took over the personnel office by switching out the White House liaisons and having them work for the White House instead of the agency.
[46] And we're doing that now by creating a team that's basically working at the direction of the president like they should.
[47] The executive should have full control over his branch.
[48] And that means having every political appointee, not only aligned, but trained on how to be effective.
[49] Now, we've seen reports that Trump might really struggle to find people who, that will agree to be part of his administration.
[50] Are you seeing that in this search process?
[51] I'm not seeing that at all.
[52] I mean, in the first term, we had such great people that may have been in junior roles, that can now be in senior roles.
[53] We know who they are.
[54] When we ran the personnel office, we interviewed every single person.
[55] And we also have this database at Heritage and 10 ,000 people have already applied.
[56] There's great people there.
[57] That'll keep growing as the year goes on, especially after he wins.
[58] We're going to get inundated with great people.
[59] I mean, we see the enthusiasm anytime we have an event, anytime we do local or national media around the project.
[60] We're getting a lot of great people, a lot of qualified people that want to work and I think can serve in any capacity probably.
[61] And have you been coordinating directly with Trump or the Trump campaign on this?
[62] You know, I think we've kept them pretty separate for now.
[63] I think the candidate and the campaign need to keep their eye on the ball.
[64] They need to be totally focused on winning.
[65] We're totally focused on what happens after and leaving superstition aside, I don't think it's good to mix.
[66] the two.
[67] Obviously, there will need to be coordination, and the president and his team will announce an official transition this summer, and we're going to integrate a lot of our work with them.
[68] But I think keeping the two separate is actually the most beneficial way to go about it.
[69] Now, some of the worries from the left about Trump winning is that he's going to gut the federal government.
[70] He's vowed to take more aggressive action in terms of restaffing, eliminating some of the deep state obstacles.
[71] Do you think that he's going to come in with a different attitude this time?
[72] And is that a good or a bad thing?
[73] It's a good thing.
[74] I think we've learned from experience.
[75] But the number one thing, rather than mass layoffs or taking down the entire bureaucracy, the number one thing is just having empowered political appointees that know how to work and how to operate.
[76] You know, obviously you need to keep some of the bureaucrats in line and some go rogue, but that's very few.
[77] For the most part, it's just slow rolling what the White House wants.
[78] It's just kind of ignoring it.
[79] So you need people that can go in and say, here's the agenda and everybody get on board.
[80] And for the most part, I think the bureaucracy will go along with most of it.
[81] Does that mean there needs to be downsizing?
[82] Probably.
[83] Does that mean there needs to be cut so we can become more efficient?
[84] Probably.
[85] But I think other than taking out the DEI offices and things like that, I don't think there'll be mass layoffs like people expect.
[86] Speaking of layoffs, Biden has taken some action to insulate some of the bureaucrats making it harder to fire more people.
[87] Our recent reporting on this shows around 2 .2 million federal employees having more protections in the future.
[88] Have you guys looked into the action taken by Biden to block firing?
[89] Yeah, so a lot of people don't know that.
[90] The president can't fire 99 .8 % of the people that work for him.
[91] So it's kind of a crazy thing.
[92] But Biden just put out a new regulation that's going to make it a little bit harder.
[93] We'll repeal that, and that might take a month or two.
[94] But there's actually something deeper, which is, doesn't have to do with Schedule F or, you know, laying off career bureaucrats, more about just figuring out and using a legal team, which Project 2025 has, just how to go about this in the most effective way.
[95] I think you need a few examples if a bureaucrat goes rogue and totally tries to subvert the agenda.
[96] But for the most part, just thinking about how to make it all work for you, I think we'll serve us a lot better.
[97] As for the media in Democrats' concerns about that, why this fear of a second Trump term resulting in federal layoffs?
[98] I think big government always serves left -wing purposes, and they know that.
[99] So I think any time you want to attack that or diminish that in any way, they freak out.
[100] So that's part of it.
[101] And then I think they don't like the fact that the president can have this authority, which he should have, since, you know, FDR, no president has exerted his actual control over the executive branch in the same capacity, and it's been diminished over the years.
[102] That's fine if you're a Democrat because the bureaucracy and the establishment and the machine already is in agreement with the agenda.
[103] But if you're a Trump and you're trying to do right -wing things or conservative things, it's very hard to get the machine moving in your direction.
[104] And I think they know that.
[105] A big government is harder to move, so we can't move as quickly as we should be able to.
[106] we've seen a lot of support for Trump publicly.
[107] We've seen some viral moments with him where he's sort of interacting with blue -collar folks in a bodega and a chick fillet.
[108] What are you seeing in terms of public perception of Trump this go -round compared to previous election cycles?
[109] Do you feel like the momentum is on his side?
[110] I think momentum is on his side.
[111] Obviously, his initial appeal was to the working class and a very combative outsider approach, and maybe being an incumbent president actually hindered that a little bit.
[112] And maybe now that he's back to being the outsider, he's the champion of the everyday man. It probably helps that they're attacking him with everything they have in the legal system and kind of making him into this martyr.
[113] So maybe being the outsider again is actually rallying the troops.
[114] As we discussed, you served in multiple roles for Trump.
[115] What was your biggest takeaway from that time in his administration?
[116] I think working in government actually made us all realize that change can be done.
[117] And it just takes the willpower and the courage to do it.
[118] So by doing all this work so far in advance with Project 2025, I think we can put the team together that can actually put this country on a different course, a more conservative course, an America First course, and give Donald Trump the term he deserves, finally.
[119] Well, John, thank you so much for joining us.
[120] John McEntee, founder of the Right Stuff and senior advisor to the Heritage Foundation, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.