Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On from the Heritage Foundation to talk about Project twenty
twenty five, which, depending on who you talk to, is
an evil Bond villain like plan to take over the world,
or it's just a document put together by one hundred
conservative groups of a conservative wish list of policy positions
that they believe would make the country better. So we'll
talk to Hans about which it is. Hans, welcome back to.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
The show, Mattie, Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
So I want to start by that if this is
a secret Bond villain like plan to take over the world,
you guys probably should not have put it on the internet, right,
I mean, you should not have created its own website,
Project twenty twenty five dot org so people could go
read it from themselves. What was the super secret, machiavellian
(00:47):
thinking behind putting it on the web.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Well, you know, the claims being made about it are
so bizarre and just so stupid. It's just astonishing. Look,
we've been doing this since the Reagan administration. That was
the first time that the Heritage Foundation put together what
we called Mandate for Leadership. Basically, it was a set
(01:13):
of policy proposals for every single executive department the reforms
we think were needed, how those departments ought to be run.
That's exactly what this is, except we expanded it. We got,
as you said, over one hundred conservative think tanks and
organizations involved several hundred people in twenty twenty two, and
(01:36):
we said, look, if you were put in charge of
the executive branch in a new administration, what would you
reform How would you run each of these departments. So
we have a nine hundred page policy book. There's a
chapter on every major department, whether it's DoD or Justice department, education,
(01:58):
and it sets out what we think those departments ought
to be doing instead of what they are doing, which
is often far beyond what they're authorized to do under
the law.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
This really and I've not read the whole thing. I'm
not going to pretend I've read the whole thing. I've
dipped my toe into various sections to kind of get
a feel for it. This is essentially a giant hr
manual for how to run a federal government. When you
get right down to it, it's actually quite dull, right,
I mean, it's kind of a dull policy oriented on
(02:32):
the functionality of government document. From where I'm sitting, am
I reading that right.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
No, no, you are reading it right.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
And look, I know that the average person doesn't have
time to read nine hundred pages. But if you want
to know just how wrong all these critics are, you know,
you can go to the website Project twenty twenty five
dot or just pick one chapter, you know, pick a
department you're interested defense, maybe just department Education, maybe the
(03:02):
Energy Department. Just read that one chapter and I think
the majority of people are going to come back saying,
you know what, this is common sense. These are kind
of reforms that are needed in the federal government.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And Mandy, it does things like.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Stop the Energy Department from coming out and telling all
of us that we can't have gas stoves in our homes. Right.
It says that the federal government can't force us to
buy electric cars, which is the way the administration is going.
It's trying to push back from this over regulation. And
(03:41):
like I said, have these departments do what they were
originally intended to do and as opposed to what they're
doing now.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Well, I have to ask you, and I've known of
and been to the Heritage Foundation, and you know it
is well esteemed.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
In Washington, d C.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
As a policy think tank, well known to have conservative viewpoints,
but also kind of a staid institution in many ways.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
It's the nature of the beast. You know. Were you surprised?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Was did you guys start getting the word Wait a minute,
they're talking about Project twenty twenty five. Was it a
shock when this became the new talking points for everyone,
including the media who were obviously working for the Democrats.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Well, I think there were two things going Well, I
was kind of surprised, but not really. I think there
were two things going on here. Remember this has been
out for more than a year, and yet all of
a sudden it was the major topic. It started being
the major topic after the presidential debate, right, And I
gotta tell you, I think it's because the left needed
(04:48):
a distraction from the physical and the questions that voters
started having about the physical and mental infirmities of the president,
and so they picked this even though they hadn't really
been talking about it before. The second thing is, look,
liberals want an all powerful central government, one that there's
(05:14):
no limits on what it can do, and a government
that can run our lives for us and tell us
what to do. And this policy, these policy proposals are
the exact opposite of that. We want government doing what
it should be doing, you know, for example, making sure
the cars are safe, but not telling us what kind
(05:38):
of cars we can buy.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
I want to ask you, I mean, can I throw
you a curveball today, Hans. I've interviewed you enough times
to know that you're pretty good with curveballs. So I
wanted to ask a little bit about election law, because
that is in your background pretty significantly. And we have
Donald Trump on the stump right now talking about making
changes to make sure that elections are safe.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
What role is, any how.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Broad, is the role of the Federal Elections Commission in
micromanaging states election policy? Because that really is seems to
be the issue for a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And I figured, since I had you, i'd ask you
that question.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Well, it's actually kind of funny because you know, the
Federal Election Commission, where I once served as a commissioner,
actually has nothing whatsoever to do with running elections in
the States. Its only job actually is to enforce the
federal laws that govern the raising and spending of money
(06:38):
for federal campaigns. The Justice Department does have a role
in our elections, but only to enforce our federal laws
that prevent really discrimination in the voting contest, and also
the National Voter Registration Act, which for example, says that
(06:59):
you know, states have to give you the opportunity to
register to vote when you go get your driver's license.
But other than that, no, it's state governments and really
local governments that are responsible for administering our elections. And frankly,
that's the way it ought to stay.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
I agree, and.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I wanted to make sure that I knew that as
I thought I did. So it's a little bit it's
a bit of a hollow promise for Donald Trump to
say he's going to clean up elections, because that has
to be done at the state level. So, you know,
that is going to be an interesting position going forward.
It's been fascinating for me to watch the president pivot,
the former president pivot from it was stolen to we're
(07:40):
just going to ensure from here on out everything is good,
which I think is the way to go. One more
question yanking you back to Project twenty twenty five haunts
who can be briefed on this, and you know, did
you guys brief the Trump campaign? Was the Trump campaign
involved in the creation of Project twenty twenty five as
being as is being alleged by so many.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
No, remember, we started this in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
There was no Trump campaigned in twenty twenty two, Trump
wasn't running for office. And the critics have pointed to
the fact that some former members of the Trump administration
were involved in helping prepare some of the chapters on
some of the departments. But look, we had I think
over four hundred people involved in riding this. We had
(08:29):
people from the Trump administration, the Bush administration, the Reagan administration.
Why well, because we wanted people writing these chapters and
what the reforms ought to be who had worked in
these departments. So yeah, there were former officials from the
Trump administration, but also from several other administrations. And the
(08:49):
Trump campaign had nothing to do with riding this. This
this mandate for leadership is for whoever's elected president. We
hope they will consider it and follow it the way
Ronald Reagan did when he first got into office, and.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
That you know both times and I know that Trump
used a lot of the policy suggestions economically from the
Heritage Foundation in his first term, and then you have
Reagan using the recommendations as well.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Call me crazy, but.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
I'm thinking the eighties and the late twenty tens were
a pretty good time for the United States economically.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
So I guess you guys are giving good advice.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Listen, Ronald Reagan liked our mandate for leadership the first
time we did this so much that he handed out
copies of it at his first cabinet meeting and told
his secretaries to follow the Heritage Foundation's recommendations. And as
you say, we had a tremendous economic expansion.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
We had low gas and food prices.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
In fact, the eighties, once Reagan was well into an administration,
those were a good time for a Yes.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
They were.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
One last question for you, and it's it just has
to do with the way this is being covered. Do
you know how many mainstream news organizations have come to
you guys and said, hey, let's talk about Project twenty
twenty five. Let's find out what it really is. Has
that been happening to your knowledge?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Yes, Now, we've gotten a lot of calls about this,
and you know what's so interesting about it is even
some of the very left stream media organizations have started
pointing out the lies have been told about even CNN
recently wrote and talked about the fact that some of
(10:42):
the claims being made by Kamala Harris were just simply
not true and were complete fabrications. So actually, the more
people learn about it, the polling shows, the more people think, Wow,
these are good ideas.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Does that strike you as odd that the Democratic leadership
who decided to make this their campaign point when, but
when Biden was obviously not capable of running a campaign
and they were looking for a boogeyman to distract, Which
I think you're absolutely right when you said that, Hans,
But do you think that they were They're so out
of touch that they don't realize that these things that
(11:19):
are in this actually makes sense to the American people
and resonate with them in a way that maybe the
Democratic Party isn't right now.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
I gotta tell you, I think they are very patronizingly
dismissive of the American public. I mean, I frankly think
they believe the American public is stupid and that people
won't realize when they are being told lies about not
just what we've done, but about other public policy issues.
(11:49):
I have a lot more faith in the American people
than I think they do so. Listen, the more they
talk about it, I think the more people will actually
go and look at it. Well, what is Heritage actually recommended?
That's that's good for Project twenty five twenty twenty five because,
like I said, I think they'll they'll think, boy, this
is common sense.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
You can go to Project twenty twenty five dot org
and you can download the document. You can search it
like a word document if you want to search any
specific thing. Where they are the part where you put
people back in chains. What chapter is that, Hans, Or
the part where women are now chained to an oven
with a baby on each hip.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
What pages are those on?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well, well, that's like you know, the claims that it
bans abortion, bans contraception, bans no fault divorce, none of that.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
All those claims made. None of that is in the
mandate for religion.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
None of that's in any of these policy propos Those
are the kind of lies that are being told about
is to try to scare voters.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
That's just a sad state of affairs, but absolutely believable.
Hans von Spakowski from the Heritage Foundation, thank you so
much for your time today, and thank you for much
for clarifying this super one last question before I let
you go, how many left leaning think tanks in DC
are trying to influence policy on a daily basis.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Listen, when the Biden administration came into office, all these
left wing think tanks, the Center for American Progress, the
Brookings Institute, they lost huge numbers of their staffs who
went where they all went to work in the administration.
So they clearly are influencing everything that the Biden administration
(13:38):
has been doing. It's like I said, the idea that
where the only conservatives do this is just ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
When I something caught my ear in the president's press
conference about the Supreme Court, where now you know, he
wants to do something about the Supreme Court now that
they're losing, and he said a report he had read
determined that eighteen years was the proper amount of time
I think it was eighteen years on the Supreme Court.
And I thought to myself, I wonder who wrote that report,
(14:06):
and I wonder if they put it on the internet
for everyone to see. And I wonder why we don't
hear about that from the left the same way we
hear about it from the right.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Just questions that came up.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Well, you know, it's funny the president proposing an eighteen
year term for Supreme Court justices. He says that's necessary.
He served thirty six years in the US Senate twice
that and I don't hear him saying that there should
be term limits of eighteen years for US senators.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
That's necessary for the good of America.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
I agree, Hans von Spakowski. I'm glad I asked that question.
That was a perfect answer. I appreciate your time today, sir, and.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Hopefully we can chat again soon.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Sure thing, any time, all right, thank you.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
That, Hans von Spakovski. Say it with me, everyone, Hans
van Spekowski
On from the Heritage Foundation to talk about Project twenty
twenty five, which, depending on who you talk to, is
an evil Bond villain like plan to take over the world,
or it's just a document put together by one hundred
conservative groups of a conservative wish list of policy positions
that they believe would make the country better. So we'll
talk to Hans about which it is. Hans, welcome back to.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
The show, Mattie, Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
So I want to start by that if this is
a secret Bond villain like plan to take over the world,
you guys probably should not have put it on the internet, right,
I mean, you should not have created its own website,
Project twenty twenty five dot org so people could go
read it from themselves. What was the super secret, machiavellian
(00:47):
thinking behind putting it on the web.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Well, you know, the claims being made about it are
so bizarre and just so stupid. It's just astonishing. Look,
we've been doing this since the Reagan administration. That was
the first time that the Heritage Foundation put together what
we called Mandate for Leadership. Basically, it was a set
(01:13):
of policy proposals for every single executive department the reforms
we think were needed, how those departments ought to be run.
That's exactly what this is, except we expanded it. We got,
as you said, over one hundred conservative think tanks and
organizations involved several hundred people in twenty twenty two, and
(01:36):
we said, look, if you were put in charge of
the executive branch in a new administration, what would you
reform How would you run each of these departments. So
we have a nine hundred page policy book. There's a
chapter on every major department, whether it's DoD or Justice department, education,
(01:58):
and it sets out what we think those departments ought
to be doing instead of what they are doing, which
is often far beyond what they're authorized to do under
the law.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
This really and I've not read the whole thing. I'm
not going to pretend I've read the whole thing. I've
dipped my toe into various sections to kind of get
a feel for it. This is essentially a giant hr
manual for how to run a federal government. When you
get right down to it, it's actually quite dull, right,
I mean, it's kind of a dull policy oriented on
(02:32):
the functionality of government document. From where I'm sitting, am
I reading that right.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
No, no, you are reading it right.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
And look, I know that the average person doesn't have
time to read nine hundred pages. But if you want
to know just how wrong all these critics are, you know,
you can go to the website Project twenty twenty five
dot or just pick one chapter, you know, pick a
department you're interested defense, maybe just department Education, maybe the
(03:02):
Energy Department. Just read that one chapter and I think
the majority of people are going to come back saying,
you know what, this is common sense. These are kind
of reforms that are needed in the federal government.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And Mandy, it does things like.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Stop the Energy Department from coming out and telling all
of us that we can't have gas stoves in our homes. Right.
It says that the federal government can't force us to
buy electric cars, which is the way the administration is going.
It's trying to push back from this over regulation. And
(03:41):
like I said, have these departments do what they were
originally intended to do and as opposed to what they're
doing now.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Well, I have to ask you, and I've known of
and been to the Heritage Foundation, and you know it
is well esteemed.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
In Washington, d C.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
As a policy think tank, well known to have conservative viewpoints,
but also kind of a staid institution in many ways.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
It's the nature of the beast. You know. Were you surprised?
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Was did you guys start getting the word Wait a minute,
they're talking about Project twenty twenty five. Was it a
shock when this became the new talking points for everyone,
including the media who were obviously working for the Democrats.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Well, I think there were two things going Well, I
was kind of surprised, but not really. I think there
were two things going on here. Remember this has been
out for more than a year, and yet all of
a sudden it was the major topic. It started being
the major topic after the presidential debate, right, And I
gotta tell you, I think it's because the left needed
(04:48):
a distraction from the physical and the questions that voters
started having about the physical and mental infirmities of the president,
and so they picked this even though they hadn't really
been talking about it before. The second thing is, look,
liberals want an all powerful central government, one that there's
(05:14):
no limits on what it can do, and a government
that can run our lives for us and tell us
what to do. And this policy, these policy proposals are
the exact opposite of that. We want government doing what
it should be doing, you know, for example, making sure
the cars are safe, but not telling us what kind
(05:38):
of cars we can buy.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
I want to ask you, I mean, can I throw
you a curveball today, Hans. I've interviewed you enough times
to know that you're pretty good with curveballs. So I
wanted to ask a little bit about election law, because
that is in your background pretty significantly. And we have
Donald Trump on the stump right now talking about making
changes to make sure that elections are safe.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
What role is, any how.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Broad, is the role of the Federal Elections Commission in
micromanaging states election policy? Because that really is seems to
be the issue for a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And I figured, since I had you, i'd ask you
that question.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Well, it's actually kind of funny because you know, the
Federal Election Commission, where I once served as a commissioner,
actually has nothing whatsoever to do with running elections in
the States. Its only job actually is to enforce the
federal laws that govern the raising and spending of money
(06:38):
for federal campaigns. The Justice Department does have a role
in our elections, but only to enforce our federal laws
that prevent really discrimination in the voting contest, and also
the National Voter Registration Act, which for example, says that
(06:59):
you know, states have to give you the opportunity to
register to vote when you go get your driver's license.
But other than that, no, it's state governments and really
local governments that are responsible for administering our elections. And frankly,
that's the way it ought to stay.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
I agree, and.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I wanted to make sure that I knew that as
I thought I did. So it's a little bit it's
a bit of a hollow promise for Donald Trump to
say he's going to clean up elections, because that has
to be done at the state level. So, you know,
that is going to be an interesting position going forward.
It's been fascinating for me to watch the president pivot,
the former president pivot from it was stolen to we're
(07:40):
just going to ensure from here on out everything is good,
which I think is the way to go. One more
question yanking you back to Project twenty twenty five haunts
who can be briefed on this, and you know, did
you guys brief the Trump campaign? Was the Trump campaign
involved in the creation of Project twenty twenty five as
being as is being alleged by so many.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
No, remember, we started this in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
There was no Trump campaigned in twenty twenty two, Trump
wasn't running for office. And the critics have pointed to
the fact that some former members of the Trump administration
were involved in helping prepare some of the chapters on
some of the departments. But look, we had I think
over four hundred people involved in riding this. We had
(08:29):
people from the Trump administration, the Bush administration, the Reagan administration.
Why well, because we wanted people writing these chapters and
what the reforms ought to be who had worked in
these departments. So yeah, there were former officials from the
Trump administration, but also from several other administrations. And the
(08:49):
Trump campaign had nothing to do with riding this. This
this mandate for leadership is for whoever's elected president. We
hope they will consider it and follow it the way
Ronald Reagan did when he first got into office, and.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
That you know both times and I know that Trump
used a lot of the policy suggestions economically from the
Heritage Foundation in his first term, and then you have
Reagan using the recommendations as well.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Call me crazy, but.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
I'm thinking the eighties and the late twenty tens were
a pretty good time for the United States economically.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
So I guess you guys are giving good advice.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Listen, Ronald Reagan liked our mandate for leadership the first
time we did this so much that he handed out
copies of it at his first cabinet meeting and told
his secretaries to follow the Heritage Foundation's recommendations. And as
you say, we had a tremendous economic expansion.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
We had low gas and food prices.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
In fact, the eighties, once Reagan was well into an administration,
those were a good time for a Yes.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
They were.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
One last question for you, and it's it just has
to do with the way this is being covered. Do
you know how many mainstream news organizations have come to
you guys and said, hey, let's talk about Project twenty
twenty five. Let's find out what it really is. Has
that been happening to your knowledge?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Yes, Now, we've gotten a lot of calls about this,
and you know what's so interesting about it is even
some of the very left stream media organizations have started
pointing out the lies have been told about even CNN
recently wrote and talked about the fact that some of
(10:42):
the claims being made by Kamala Harris were just simply
not true and were complete fabrications. So actually, the more
people learn about it, the polling shows, the more people think, Wow,
these are good ideas.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Does that strike you as odd that the Democratic leadership
who decided to make this their campaign point when, but
when Biden was obviously not capable of running a campaign
and they were looking for a boogeyman to distract, Which
I think you're absolutely right when you said that, Hans,
But do you think that they were They're so out
of touch that they don't realize that these things that
(11:19):
are in this actually makes sense to the American people
and resonate with them in a way that maybe the
Democratic Party isn't right now.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
I gotta tell you, I think they are very patronizingly
dismissive of the American public. I mean, I frankly think
they believe the American public is stupid and that people
won't realize when they are being told lies about not
just what we've done, but about other public policy issues.
(11:49):
I have a lot more faith in the American people
than I think they do so. Listen, the more they
talk about it, I think the more people will actually
go and look at it. Well, what is Heritage actually recommended?
That's that's good for Project twenty five twenty twenty five because,
like I said, I think they'll they'll think, boy, this
is common sense.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
You can go to Project twenty twenty five dot org
and you can download the document. You can search it
like a word document if you want to search any
specific thing. Where they are the part where you put
people back in chains. What chapter is that, Hans, Or
the part where women are now chained to an oven
with a baby on each hip.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
What pages are those on?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well, well, that's like you know, the claims that it
bans abortion, bans contraception, bans no fault divorce, none of that.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
All those claims made. None of that is in the
mandate for religion.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
None of that's in any of these policy propos Those
are the kind of lies that are being told about
is to try to scare voters.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
That's just a sad state of affairs, but absolutely believable.
Hans von Spakowski from the Heritage Foundation, thank you so
much for your time today, and thank you for much
for clarifying this super one last question before I let
you go, how many left leaning think tanks in DC
are trying to influence policy on a daily basis.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Listen, when the Biden administration came into office, all these
left wing think tanks, the Center for American Progress, the
Brookings Institute, they lost huge numbers of their staffs who
went where they all went to work in the administration.
So they clearly are influencing everything that the Biden administration
(13:38):
has been doing. It's like I said, the idea that
where the only conservatives do this is just ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
When I something caught my ear in the president's press
conference about the Supreme Court, where now you know, he
wants to do something about the Supreme Court now that
they're losing, and he said a report he had read
determined that eighteen years was the proper amount of time
I think it was eighteen years on the Supreme Court.
And I thought to myself, I wonder who wrote that report,
(14:06):
and I wonder if they put it on the internet
for everyone to see. And I wonder why we don't
hear about that from the left the same way we
hear about it from the right.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Just questions that came up.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Well, you know, it's funny the president proposing an eighteen
year term for Supreme Court justices. He says that's necessary.
He served thirty six years in the US Senate twice
that and I don't hear him saying that there should
be term limits of eighteen years for US senators.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
That's necessary for the good of America.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
I agree, Hans von Spakowski. I'm glad I asked that question.
That was a perfect answer. I appreciate your time today, sir, and.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Hopefully we can chat again soon.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Sure thing, any time, all right, thank you.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
That, Hans von Spakovski. Say it with me, everyone, Hans
van Spekowski
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.