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CNN —
For much of his presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump sought to distance himself from Project 2025, a detailed playbook developed by conservative activists for Trump’s second term.
Whether his allies will try to implement some of his controversial plans if he wins the 2024 election remains a matter of debate.
But an equally radical and far-reaching plan for government reform is coming from Trump himself, in which mavericks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be given free rein to “run amok” with the health and safety system. , Elon Musk will also be able to do so. As the tech billionaire said, “starting from scratch” with federal employees.
So, without getting hung up on whether President Trump supports Project 2025 or not, we wonder what the former president and the people he claims to empower will do if he wins the White House. Let’s see what was said.
President Trump promised to give Kennedy free rein to reshape how government health care agencies protect Americans.
“I’m going to get him hooked on food. I’m going to get him hooked on drugs,” Trump said at his closing argument Sunday at Madison Square Garden.
Much of what Kennedy is promoting sounds positive. His Make America Healthy Again PAC promises to focus on “prioritizing regenerative agriculture, protecting natural habitats, and eliminating toxins from our food, water, and air.”
But these ideas lack specificity, and there are also personal issues that prevent others from serving in government. Kennedy compared the need for vaccines to the days of Nazi Germany, arguing that Anne Frank was in a better situation. He was once arrested for heroin possession. And they have spread wild conspiracy theories that chemicals in the water are turning children gay or transgender.
There are also concerns about President Kennedy’s own health. He told The New York Times that he once ate too much tuna and sea bass and experienced “severe brain fog” from mercury poisoning.
In a video obtained by CNN, Kennedy told supporters Monday that Trump had promised the former president would give him broad powers over multiple government agencies if he won the election.
“I think the key — and what President Trump has promised me — is control of the public health agencies, HHS and its subordinate agency, the CDC. Disease Prevention. Administration), the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), the NIH (National Institutes of Health), and several others, as well as the USDA (Department of Agriculture), because we use a lot of seed oils and pesticides. Because we have to stop,” Kennedy said.
CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment, Aaron Perish reports. Therefore, it is unclear whether President Trump’s “runaway” is the same as President Kennedy’s view that such broad control would be granted. President Trump has vowed that Kennedy will serve on a commission investigating the rise in chronic disease. Project 2025 proposed a major overhaul of the health agency, including breaking up the CDC.
“President Trump’s plan has caused alarm in the public health community, but it’s not so much the concrete policy proposals that President Kennedy has communicated as part of his ‘Make America Healthy Again’ platform, but rather what he omitted. “Vaccines have been a major issue,” according to CNN’s Meg Tyrrell. She wrote a detailed review of Kennedy’s record on health issues.
Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy have expressed skepticism about vaccines, and Mr. Kennedy is an activist who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccines. Tyrrell noted that during the campaign, Kennedy did not emphasize his views on vaccines much. His push for more natural foods has gained support among some health experts.
Mr. Musk, a billionaire Trump supporter, will be given a far wider range of assets than Mr. Kennedy and will be held responsible for the massive downsizing of the federal government.
The situation is even more troubling because many of Mr. Musk’s companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, have an interest in doing business with governments for profit. The US government currently relies on SpaceX, which also owns satellite internet provider Starlink.
If you have any doubts that Musk’s government role could pose a risk of conflict of interest, look no further than the fact that he has said he could potentially lead the Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE is the name of Musk’s cryptocurrency, an area the Trump family is also keen to get into.
Musk also regularly makes anti-Semitic statements and muses that women shouldn’t vote. Not to mention reports of meetings with hostile foreign leaders.
In a potential new Trump administration, Musk has promised to reinvent the federal bureaucracy.
“Let’s start from scratch,” Musk said at an event in Pittsburgh in October, suggesting a fundamental overhaul of the federal bureaucracy.
CNN’s David Goldman looked at what Trump and Musk have said this month about Musk’s possible role in the government, which focuses on deep spending cuts. Mr. Musk said $2 trillion could be saved, perhaps with the help of artificial intelligence — and loosening regulations. But he’ll apparently do it in a good way.
“Musk promised to treat laid-off government employees generously, including generous severance packages, but he also proposed an evaluation system that would threaten overspending with termination,” Goldman wrote.
The problem, according to former Treasury Secretary Larry Sommer, is that there is no $2 trillion to be made from massive government layoffs.
“With all due respect, I think that’s foolish,” Summers said on Fox News this week. “These people think it’s like a business. But here’s the problem: Only 15 percent of the federal budget goes toward salaries. So even if you work for the federal government, You’re not going to save $2 trillion or whatever by laying off all your employees.”
Summers points to payroll. The government spent about $271 billion to compensate 2.3 million military personnel in 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Summers said Musk would need to turn to Social Security and Medicare benefits to achieve trillions of dollars in cuts, something Trump has promised not to do.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump ally, said Monday in Pennsylvania that if Trump wins and Republicans keep control of the House, there will be a “major” overhaul of the health care system. “No Obamacare?” shouted a participant at a campaign event. “There is no Obamacare,” Johnson said.
He further added: “The ACA is very deeply ingrained. It requires major reform to make it work. And there were a lot of ideas about how to make it happen.”
In a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September, Trump did not go into details, but said he had a “concept” for the plan. These are not shared publicly.
Although Trump unsuccessfully tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act while in the White House, it is clear that overhauling the health care system remains a priority for Republicans.
This points out that no matter what Mr. Trump promises to Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Musk or what Mr. Johnson wants on health care, the reality of the U.S. government makes it difficult to achieve dramatic change. It is suitable for
The Senate minority, assuming there are more than 40 senators, could block any attempt to actually repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Senate is supposed to confirm Cabinet members and other top officials, but Trump and other presidents have found ways to circumvent this rule in the Constitution. It is unclear whether Mr. Kennedy will receive the votes to be confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services or whether Mr. Trump will nominate him. Even if Kennedy had held a role in the White House, his ability to effect sweeping change would have been limited.
While the president has authority over federal employees, and Trump worked to reclassify many federal workers during his presidency to make it easier to fire them, a “starting from scratch” scenario theoretically requires Congress to Approval required.
Unlike the detailed Project 2025 plan, there are no details to match these big ideas, so we can’t say with certainty what will require Congressional approval. At least not yet.
