If re-elected, former President Donald Trump can and would certainly set his own policy agendas.
He’s no more tied as such to the suggestions put forward by the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 than he is to any other organizations’ blueprints for his would-be second administration.
But he can’t distance himself from the fact that, for instance, Project 2025 has been drafted by people who served in his previous administration, and who are being talked about as likely serving in a second go-around.
So when Trump’s former director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget, who is said to be on the short list as a potential White House chief of staff, pushes ideas from Project 2025 and moans that the Republican Party has been too focused in the past on “religious liberty” instead of “Christian nation-ism,” that is a real point of concern.
Unlike the theocracies of the Middle East or even the official Anglicanism of Great Britain, we are not an anything nation, as secularly created by the Founding Fathers. We are a nation of, well, religious liberty, perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, and proudly so.
Russell Vought, caught on tape endorsing Christian nationalist views, is one of the key authors of Project 2025, and also of the GOP platform from last month’s Republican Convention.
So he’s not exactly a distant figure from the Trump inner circle.
“I want to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation,” Vought said. “And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism. That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism because I also believe in nationalism.”
He added, according to a CNN paraphrase of the transcript of a conversation with Vought, “that conservatives should push to have debates over whether to allow mosques to be built in America’s downtowns, and whether Christian immigrants should be prioritized over those of other faiths — ideas that run contrary to First Amendment protections.”
Vought then discussed other items from the Project 2025 blueprint — including national abortion restrictions and making pornography illegal in the United States.
The former OMB head, who after Trump lost the last election started the Center for Renewing America, a nonprofit that describes itself as the “tip of the America First spear,” was not caught on tape discussing future plans in an ordinary journalistic interview. In a ruse cooked up by English nonprofit, the Centre for Climate Reporting, Vought thought that he was talking to wealthy potential donors to his nonprofit, and did not know he was being recorded on videotape. The deceit runs counter to the ethics of mainstream American news organizations, though it is common enough in the UK.
But in the end Vought doesn’t disavow anything he said. “It would have been easier to just do a Google search to ‘uncover’ what is already on our website and said in countless national media interviews,” said Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the Center for Renewing America. “But thank you for airing our perfect conversation.”
Perfect conversation?
Been a while since we heard that term.
After the story ran, the Trump campaign said in a statement by Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser, “President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term.”
Of course that’s true. But other than noting his own independence, Trump hasn’t actually disavowed Vought’s points of view.
Does the former president really think it would harm his electoral chances if he came out with a ringing endorsement of religious freedom in America?
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