If Trump wins the presidential election, Project 2025 gives us an inkling of what his next term might look like. But due to a power struggle within the far-right, there could be another plan that’s just as threatening. On this week’s “How We Got Here,” Max and Erin hear from New York Times reporter Ken Bensinger about the America First Policy Institute and its political goals with a second Trump term.
So, Max, over the weekend, I was talking to somebody about what Trump would do with another term.
Sounds like a chill time at brunch, Erin.
It was an Instagram DM fight with someone who had posted a story claiming that both parties were the same, actually.
And something occurred to me that it.
Would be terrible that.
And we're missing one very important piece of information.
And what's that?
We know what Trump wants to do because he won't stop talking about it, and we know what he did last time, but we know a lot less about what the people around him would do.
Oh, that's a great point, because so much of Trump's first term was him getting boxed in or led around on policy by his own inner circle.
Right, but there's only so much we can know about an inner circle that doesn't exist yet.
Well, Aaron, I have some good news for your next Instagram argument, because a flurry of recent reporting just revealed that a kind of shadow White House has quietly formed with Trump's blessing.
And we know a lot about what they want to do because they wrote it down.
This is going to be like that scene in the South Imagination Land episodes when all the evil breaks out of evil Imagination Land.
Right.
It's going to be worse.
I'm Max Fisher.
I'm Erin Ryan.
And this is how we got here.
A series where we explore a big question behind the week's headlines and tell a story that answers that question.
Our question this.