Speaker 1: From SHORTZ Media. I'm Rick Morton.
Speaker 2: This is seven AM. President Joe Biden has spent the
Speaker 2: last week trying to recover from a debate performance that's
Speaker 2: been described as calamitous and agonizing.
Speaker 3: Was this a bad episode with a sign of a
Speaker 3: more serious condition.
Speaker 4: It's a bad episode. No, one, kid's very serious condition
Speaker 4: of success.
Speaker 1: The New York Times, top donors and several of his
Speaker 1: congressional colleagues have been calling for him to leave the race,
Speaker 1: but at this point he's still refusing.
Speaker 3: If you can be convinced that you can knock defeat
Speaker 3: Donald Trump while you stand out.
Speaker 4: Well the fans of I know as the Lord or
Speaker 4: Mighty comes out and tells me that I might do
Speaker 4: that well.
Speaker 1: And as Donald Trump's leading the polls, Whydon's attention is
Speaker 1: now turning to the former president's potential agenda if you
Speaker 1: were to win another term, with one particular blueprint raising concern.
Speaker 1: It's called Project twenty twenty five and includes calls to
Speaker 1: expand presidential power, dismantle federal agencies, and dramatically increase America's
Speaker 1: military capability. Today, senior researcher at the Australian Institute, doctor
Speaker 1: Emma shortas on Project twenty twenty five and why its
Speaker 1: authors are threatening a second American revolution. It's Monday, the
Speaker 1: eighth of July. Emma shortis the pressure for President Biden
Speaker 1: to pull out of the US presidential election is increasing
Speaker 1: quite intensely as his popularity continues to slide. Of course,
Speaker 1: there was that disastrous debate, and that also means the
Speaker 1: likelihood of a second Trump presidency is going up as well.
Speaker 1: So how will Trump two point zero actually be different
Speaker 1: this time around compared to Trump's first go rick.
Speaker 5: It's always, of course, difficult to predict anything about Donald
Speaker 5: Trump because he is such a loose canon. But it's
Speaker 5: pretty clear if you look not so much at Trump
Speaker 5: himself but the kind of structures that have been built
Speaker 5: beneath him, that a second Trump presidency would be radically different.
Speaker 1: From the first.
Speaker 5: Particularly, the first couple of months of the Trump presidency
Speaker 5: were marked by chaos, mostly because Trump and the people
Speaker 5: around him didn't really understand how American power functions and
Speaker 5: how to use the systems of American power to get
Speaker 5: what they want.
Speaker 6: One of the things that has made this White House
Speaker 6: different from all the other White Houses is the amount
Speaker 6: of leaking that happens inside it. This White House is
Speaker 6: so leaking. Last year, Axials published a piece entitled White
Speaker 6: House Leakers Leak about leaking.
Speaker 5: And that is no longer true. They've really learnt the
Speaker 5: lessons of particularly those early days of the Trump presidency.
Speaker 5: In fact, there are plan written by the Heritage Foundation
Speaker 5: and about one hundred other conservative think tanks in the
Speaker 5: United States for pretty much every single federal department and agency,
Speaker 5: every policy area that you can think of, with pretty
Speaker 5: extraordinary radical ideas for what that second Trump presidency would do.
Speaker 7: What Project twenty twenty five is trying to do is
Speaker 7: issue a corrective a series of new regulation or deregulation,
Speaker 7: new policies, new leadership to undo, to correct the century
Speaker 7: long capital p progressive project of establishing a fourth branch
Speaker 7: of government, the administrative state.
Speaker 5: Project twenty twenty five is a plan for the next
Speaker 5: conservative presidency. This is how they describe it, and it's
Speaker 5: attempting to replicate what they did in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 5: for the Reagan administration, where they handed Reagan the plan
Speaker 5: for a conservative policy agenda for the president that he
Speaker 5: went on to implement it.
Speaker 8: I thank you, Heritage, thanks you, and so does the
Speaker 8: conservative movement. But I can't help reflecting tonight and the
Speaker 8: fact that Heritage ten actually exceeded its fundraising goal by
Speaker 8: two million dollars.
Speaker 5: You know, Originally, I think you could have classified Heritage
Speaker 5: as a kind of traditionally conservative organization, particularly in the
Speaker 5: Reagan era. You know, it was all about implementing conservative policies,
Speaker 5: particularly kind of social conservatism when it came to Reagan.
Speaker 5: And really they almost kind of collapsed and felp totally
Speaker 5: out of favor once Trump won. But what they've done
Speaker 5: is successfully kind of rebuild themselves in his image and
Speaker 5: particularly in the image of the far right. Increasingly. You know,
Speaker 5: you can see the Heritage Foundation and Project twenty twenty
Speaker 5: five really dominating the kind of far right media universe
Speaker 5: in particular. So Kevin Roberts, for example, who's the president
Speaker 5: of their Heritage Foundation, has been on television just this
Speaker 5: week saying that something along the lines of the revolution
Speaker 5: will be bloodless if the left allows it to be.
Speaker 9: We're in the process of taking this country back. The
Speaker 9: reason that they are apoplectic right now, the reason that
Speaker 9: so many anchors on MSNBC, for example, are losing their
Speaker 9: minds daily, is because our side is winning, and so
Speaker 9: I come full circle in this response and just want
Speaker 9: to encourage you with some substance that we are in
Speaker 9: the process of the Second American Revolution, which will remain
Speaker 9: bloodless if the left allows.
Speaker 1: It to be. Oh, it's a threat, it's absolutely threat.
Speaker 5: It's absolutely a threat. And the language is about warfare
Speaker 5: and joining the mission. So again, you know, they're not
Speaker 5: hiding any of this. And they're even former Trump administration
Speaker 5: officials who are still you know, incredibly loyal, who are
Speaker 5: still very much in that inner circle, who are participating
Speaker 5: and driving this project twenty twenty five, and you can see,
Speaker 5: particularly in the last week, they are increasingly convinced that
Speaker 5: they've already won.
Speaker 1: So we're actually in plan. Tell me about the details.
Speaker 5: It's a nine hundred page manifesto for the next administration.
Speaker 5: It's extraordinary, and it goes into the most meticulous detail,
Speaker 5: down to low level appointments, down to low level budget
Speaker 5: lines and how budget should be allocated. You know, there's
Speaker 5: a suggestion, for example, that the entire Federal Reserve be dismantled.
Speaker 5: And alongside that mandate for leadership those detailed plans, they
Speaker 5: also have a recruitment arm which is kind of like
Speaker 5: a Conservative LinkedIn where members of a far right can
Speaker 5: express their interest in working in a future conservative administration.
Speaker 5: And what these candidates have to go through is kind
Speaker 5: of a rigorous loyalty test where they they're asked questions
Speaker 5: not about their expertise in particular policy areas, but about
Speaker 5: their loyalty to far right America and Trump in particular.
Speaker 5: And this bank of potentially tens of thousands of people
Speaker 5: again will be handed to a future conservative administration, and
Speaker 5: the idea is that that administration will use something called
Speaker 5: Schedule F, which is an old Trump executive order that
Speaker 5: reclassifies independent civil servants as political appointees so that they
Speaker 5: can be summarily fired and replaced with Trump loyalists, who,
Speaker 5: through another aspect of this Heritage Foundation plan, have gone
Speaker 5: through a whole lot of education programs in how to
Speaker 5: use power in the federal bureaucracy to achieve their ends.
Speaker 5: So all of that together represents this pretty extraordinary effort
Speaker 5: to radically reshape American politics and American culture in order
Speaker 5: to implement a far right agenda.
Speaker 1: We've spoken a lot about the domestic institutions that might
Speaker 1: be dismantled and I mean, we've always been taught that
Speaker 1: America is home to exceptionalism. But what does it mean
Speaker 1: for the rest of the world if this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff gets the full traction of President Trump's office.
Speaker 5: I think it's such an important question because so often
Speaker 5: in Australia we treat kind of the domestic politic culture
Speaker 5: of our of the United States as separate to its
Speaker 5: international presence. You know, our relationship with the United States,
Speaker 5: the alliance is something entirely different from domestic politics. But
Speaker 5: particularly what this Heritage Foundation plan does is demonstrate how
Speaker 5: you can't make that separation, because you know, plans to
Speaker 5: dismantle the Federal Reserve in the most powerful economy in
Speaker 5: the world will have unbelievable kind of mind boggling implications
Speaker 5: for the international economic system, for example. So there's that,
Speaker 5: But when you look at foreign policy as well, their
Speaker 5: plans are incredibly radical. You know, Trump has already been
Speaker 5: talking about his plans for China, for example, and putting
Speaker 5: up to one hundred percent tariffs on Chinese goods coming
Speaker 5: to the United States, which will again create significant economic
Speaker 5: turmoil internally in the United States, but that also means
Speaker 5: economic turmoil externally. And then when you put that alongside
Speaker 5: the Project twenty twenty five plans for foreign policy, and
Speaker 5: the biggest one that stands out to me is a
Speaker 5: recommendation that engagement with China should be ended and not refought.
Speaker 10: That is why we will launch an all out campaign
Speaker 10: to eliminate America's dependence on Shila.
Speaker 5: The reason is primarily that the forces behind Project twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five and Trump as well, see China as an
Speaker 5: existential threat to the United States. So this is a
Speaker 5: kind of new Cold War framing where the only way
Speaker 5: to defeat this existential threat is with force and aggression,
Speaker 5: you know, be it economic or military. It involves plans
Speaker 5: to increase the force posture of the American military, so
Speaker 5: the number of troops, for example, by up to fifty thousand,
Speaker 5: and move many of them to the Indo Pacific as
Speaker 5: well out of Europe. And I'm not sure that we
Speaker 5: are necessarily considering the implications of that and how an
Speaker 5: Australian government might manage that considerable upheaval, because there are
Speaker 5: also plans as well, I should add, to significantly increase
Speaker 5: the nuclear arsenal of the United States, and the line
Speaker 5: in Project twenty twenty five around that is that the
Speaker 5: arsenal should be increased in order to deter both China
Speaker 5: and Russia at once. So the magnitude of that planned
Speaker 5: increase again is really really quite frightening considering whose hands,
Speaker 5: you know, those weapons are going to be in.
Speaker 1: After the break. How the man standing between the rest
Speaker 1: of the world and Trump, Joe Biden, is failing to
Speaker 1: ease lories about his age and capacity.
Speaker 4: To lead, making sure that we continue to strengthen our
Speaker 4: healthcare system, making sure that we're able to make every
Speaker 4: single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to
Speaker 4: do with with the COVID I e. Scul you, with
Speaker 4: dealing with everything we have to do with what we
Speaker 4: finally beat Medicare.
Speaker 10: Thank you, President Emma.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has been underestimated before, there's no doubt about that,
Speaker 1: and now only months away from the election, there's essentially
Speaker 1: one person standing between him and the White House. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of questions about Joe Biden's capability,
Speaker 1: particularly after what was a catastrophic debate performance recently.
Speaker 5: That's right, I think you know, every time you look
Speaker 5: back at it or listen back to it, it gets
Speaker 5: worse and worse, and Biden and the Biden camp have
Speaker 5: since kind of quietly admitted that they know they've got
Speaker 5: a matter of days really to recover and to convince
Speaker 5: Democrats that they can win.
Speaker 3: At a five raiser in Virginia last night, the President
Speaker 3: blamed his performance on jet lag, saying, quote, I decided
Speaker 3: to travel around the world a couple of times shortly
Speaker 3: before the debate, I didn't listen to my staff, and
Speaker 3: then I almost fell asleep on stage.
Speaker 5: You know, if you go back to twenty twenty and
Speaker 5: the nominating process in the Democratic Party, there was a
Speaker 5: pretty extraordinary suite of young, diverse its, including Kamala Harris,
Speaker 5: who looked very much like the next generation of the
Speaker 5: Democratic Party. And part of Biden's I think pitch in
Speaker 5: his ability to win that nomination was his promise to
Speaker 5: be a generational bridge to that next generation really of
Speaker 5: diverse leadership in a Democratic Party. And I think part
Speaker 5: of what we can underestimate about Biden's trouble now is
Speaker 5: the depth of that feeling of betrayal that you know,
Speaker 5: he hasn't acted as a bridge to the next generation.
Speaker 5: The combination of Biden's catastrophic debate performance, that and the
Speaker 5: momentum behind calls for him to step aside. Once that
Speaker 5: momentum starts, it's pretty difficult to stop it.
Speaker 10: Amid the calls from some for President Biden to bow
Speaker 10: out of the race, from a Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan
Speaker 10: of Ohio says Vice President Kamala Harris should replace Biden
Speaker 10: at the top of the ticket.
Speaker 5: Biden's dilemma, I suppose, is that if he does step aside,
Speaker 5: he needs to anoint a successor. He needs to make
Speaker 5: I guess, a kind of clear pathway for the next candidate,
Speaker 5: and he has effectively already made the choice of who
Speaker 5: should be his successor.
Speaker 3: Everything is in context.
Speaker 1: My mother used to she would give us a hard
Speaker 1: time sometimes, and she would say to us, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's wrong.
Speaker 4: With you, young people.
Speaker 1: You'd think you just fell out of a coconut tree.
Speaker 5: Harris is probably the best placed candidate in terms of
Speaker 5: the actual structures that you need behind you in order
Speaker 5: to win a national election campaign. So there's a lot
Speaker 5: of noise about other potential candidates as well, but none
Speaker 5: of them have I don't think the national recognition that
Speaker 5: Harris has, or the kind of campaign architecture sitting behind
Speaker 5: them that they would need, because, of course, Harris, in
Speaker 5: the event that she did become the preferred candidate, would
Speaker 5: inherit Biden's campaign and his campaign structure and also his donors.
Speaker 5: She polls reasonably well, but not much better than Biden
Speaker 5: when it comes to a head to head against Trump.
Speaker 5: But I have to admit to being very skeptical of
Speaker 5: that kind of polling. You know, I'd be wary of
Speaker 5: putting too much stock in it because there's a pretty
Speaker 5: big difference between being a hypothetical candidate and being an
Speaker 5: actual candidate. And to go back to the kind of
Speaker 5: grim nature of American politics at the moment as well,
Speaker 5: I think we can't underestimate the scale of the backlash
Speaker 5: that would come if Harris was the candidate. If you
Speaker 5: had a black woman as a candidate, the far right
Speaker 5: in the United States will lose whatever is left of
Speaker 5: its collective mind. But there is also acknowledgment that Harris
Speaker 5: is not a progressive savior. You know, she was a
Speaker 5: prosecutor before she was the vice president and so you'll
Speaker 5: often see descriptions of her as a cop as well.
Speaker 5: And I think part of the trepidation around Harris as
Speaker 5: well is that she may not mobilize that progressive base
Speaker 5: of the Democratic Party, particularly young people and people of color,
Speaker 5: in the way that she would need to win a
Speaker 5: general presidential election. So I think there's a long way
Speaker 5: to go.
Speaker 1: You mentioned earlier when we were chatting that maybe we
Speaker 1: haven't really considered the ramifications of a second Trump presidency,
Speaker 1: particularly on some of the foreign policy issues. Are we
Speaker 1: prepared as a country for what might happen under Trump?
Speaker 5: I don't think we are, you know, I think that.
Speaker 5: I mean, there has been increasing coverage I think of
Speaker 5: the preparations that the Australian government may or may not
Speaker 5: be making for a second Trump presidency, most of which seem,
Speaker 5: from the outside at least, to center around how the
Speaker 5: government would manage Trump personally. You know, it's the old
Speaker 5: kind of ambassador Joe Hockey approach, where you get someone
Speaker 5: in who's good but not too good at golf, who
Speaker 5: can have a relationship, like, you know, your personal relationship
Speaker 5: with the president in order to kind of carve out
Speaker 5: individual exemptions for Australia from the worst of the Trump policies.
Speaker 1: Remember the first time around, when Trump was elected and
Speaker 1: Malcolm Turnble didn't know how to get in touch with him.
Speaker 1: So he used Greg Norman.
Speaker 5: The golfer exactly to like just call Trump, to call
Speaker 5: Trump directly. Yeah, exactly right. And you know, I think
Speaker 5: we can see a real effort on the part of
Speaker 5: the Israian government to make sure that that doesn't happen again,
Speaker 5: you know, to make sure that they have avenues into
Speaker 5: a potential Trump administration. There's been coverage saying that Ambassador
Speaker 5: Kevin Rudd is doing exactly that. You know, he's building
Speaker 5: up relationships with people who would be kind of central
Speaker 5: to a second Trump administration. But it does seem to
Speaker 5: be around the question of management of a Trump administration
Speaker 5: based on the assumption that Australia should maintain the same
Speaker 5: level of closeness in that alliance that we do now
Speaker 5: and that we have done for decades. So again, you know,
Speaker 5: so much of the focus is on if Trump is elected,
Speaker 5: like will he let us keep the Orchest submarine deal
Speaker 5: without I think a consideration of what keeping the Orcest
Speaker 5: submarine deal in light of a potential Trump administration's approach
Speaker 5: to China, for example.
Speaker 3: Might.
Speaker 5: So for me, those bigger questions aren't really being asked,
Speaker 5: and especially in light of you know, the language coming
Speaker 5: out of trump Land, the language coming out of Project
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five about revolutions and the dismantling of American democracy.
Speaker 5: You know, there are some pretty big questions there about
Speaker 5: Australia's so called shared values with the United States and
Speaker 5: what it would mean to maintain that same level of
Speaker 5: closeness with you know what effectively could be an authoritarian
Speaker 5: regime where now, because of a recent Supreme Court decision,
Speaker 5: the President of the United States is beyond the.
Speaker 1: Law, Doctor Ama Shorts, Thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time to talk to us.
Speaker 5: Pleasure, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, the Prime Minister Anthony Alberanezi
Speaker 1: has congratulated newly elected British Prime Minister Kiir Starmer in
Speaker 1: a phone call over the weekend. They reportedly discussed the economy,
Speaker 1: climate change and UCAS and agreed to stay in close touch.
Speaker 1: And Auntie Muriel Bamblet has been awarded Person of the
Speaker 1: Year at the National Nightouck Awards. Auntie Muriel has been
Speaker 1: the CEO of the Victorian Aboriginal Childcare Agency for twenty
Speaker 1: five years and was recognized for her ongoing advocacy of
Speaker 1: Aboriginal children and families. This is seven am. I'm Rick Morton.
Speaker 1: See you tomorrow.