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CNN –
For much of the presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump worked to distance himself from Project 2025, the detailed game plan written by conservative activists for Trump’s second term.
Whether his allies will try to implement parts of the controversial plan if he wins the 2024 election remains a topic of debate.
But there is an equally radical and expansive government reform plan coming out of Trump’s mouth, in which unconventional figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be given free rein in the health safety system and Elon Musk will be empowered. As the tech billionaire said, “starting from scratch” with the federal workforce.
Separately, Trump’s co-chairman appeared on CNN on Wednesday night to argue that Kennedy and Musk probably would not be given specific government jobs but that Kennedy would be given data in order to question vaccines.
So, without getting bogged down in whether or not Trump supports Project 2025, here’s a look at what the former president has said and the people he says he’ll do if he wins the White House.
Trump promised to give Kennedy a deadline to reshape the way the government health system protects Americans.
“I’ll let him go to the food. I’ll let him go to the meds,” Trump said during his closing rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
Much of what Kennedy is pushing seems positive. Under the slogan “Make America Healthy Again,” the political action committee promises to focus on “prioritizing regenerative agriculture, preserving natural habitats, and eliminating toxins from our food, water, and air.”
But these ideas lack specific detail, and there are personal issues that would hold anyone else back from government service. Kennedy compared the vaccine requirements to the era of Nazi Germany, claiming that Anne Frank was better off; He was once arrested for heroin possession; It pushed wild conspiracy theories about chemicals in water making children gay or transgender.
Kennedy’s health was also a concern. He told the New York Times that he once ate so much tuna and perch that he suffered “severe brain fog” from mercury poisoning.
In a video obtained by CNN, Kennedy told supporters on Monday that Trump promised to give him broad authority over multiple agencies if the former president won the election.
“The key that I think I – you know, that President Trump promised me – is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) and its subsidiary agencies, CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). ), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a few other institutes, and then also the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which, you know, is the key to making America right, “because we have to get rid of seed oils, and we have to get rid of agriculture,” Kennedy said Intensive with pesticides “Insecticide”.
In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Howard Lutnick, co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team, said Kennedy would not be in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services but would be given access to data on vaccines in order to verify their safety. But the vaccines currently approved and authorized for use in the United States have proven to be safe and effective. Lutnick also pushed unproven conspiracy theories that vaccines are the cause of autism in children. Although it is still unclear what causes autism, the scientific consensus is that vaccines do not.
“He says, ‘If you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take the data and show that it’s not secure.’ “And then, if you take away product liability (protection), companies will immediately withdraw these vaccines from the market,” Lutnick said.
Meanwhile, Trump’s plans were met with alarm in the public health community, “less because of the specific policy proposals Kennedy communicated as part of his ‘Make America Healthy Again’ platform and more about the key issue he was ignoring: vaccines,” according to CNN’s Meg Terrell. . I wrote an in-depth review of Kennedy’s record on health issues.
Both Trump and Kennedy have expressed skepticism about vaccines, and Kennedy has long been an activist pushing false theories about vaccines. Terrell points out that during the campaign Kennedy de-emphasized his views on vaccines. His quest for more natural food is finding support among some health experts.
Musk, a wealthy Trump supporter, will be given a much broader portfolio than Kennedy, and will be tasked with dramatically shrinking the size of the federal government.
It’s an even more difficult situation given that many of Musk’s companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, have a profit-motivated interest in doing business with the government. The US government currently relies on SpaceX, which also owns satellite internet provider Starlink.
If there was any doubt that Musk’s government role could pose a risk of conflict of interest, just look at the fact that he said he could be responsible for “managing the efficiency of government.” DOGE is the name of Musk’s cryptocurrency, an area the Trump family is also keen to enter.
Lutnick told Collins that Musk will not enter government because he cannot sell SpaceX but will instead write software to present to the government.
Musk has been no stranger to making headlines as his support for Trump has been on full display this campaign season. He is currently trying to move a lawsuit over his $1 million voter giveaways to federal court, potentially avoiding a hearing Thursday in Philadelphia state court that he was required to attend. At the heart of the legal battle is a daily $1 million sweepstakes offered by a major pro-Trump political action committee, called America PAC, which Musk founded, to registered voters in battleground states.
His lawyers filed a “request for deportation” in federal court late Wednesday night. This typically halts the state case temporarily and puts the matter in the hands of a federal judge — unless and until that judge decides to send the case back to the state courts.
Musk also constantly pushes anti-Semitic stuff and thinks about how women shouldn’t vote. Not to mention reports of his meetings with hostile foreign leaders.
In a potential new Trump administration, Musk promises to reinvent the federal bureaucracy.
“Let’s start from scratch,” Musk said at an event in October in Pittsburgh, proposing a radical reshaping of the federal bureaucracy.
CNN’s David Goldman this month looked at what Trump and Musk have said about a potential role for Musk in government, which would focus on sharp spending cuts — Musk said he could cut $2 trillion, perhaps with the help of artificial intelligence — and deregulation. But he’ll do it in a nice way, it seems.
“Musk has promised a sweet touch, offering generous severance packages to laid-off government employees, while at the same time proposing an evaluation system that threatens to lay off profligate employees,” Goldman wrote.
The problem, according to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summer, is that $2 trillion cannot be gained from large-scale government layoffs.
“With respect, I think this is stupid,” Summers said on Fox News this week. “These people think it’s like some business. But here’s the problem: Only 15% of the federal budget is for salaries. So, even if you took out all the employees, everyone who works in the federal government, you wouldn’t be able to come up with anything like $2 trillion.” .
Summers has a point about salaries. The government spent about $271 billion to compensate 2.3 million civilian employees in 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
To achieve trillions in cuts, Musk would have to look to Social Security and Medicare benefits, something Trump has promised not to do, Summers said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a major Trump ally, said in Pennsylvania on Monday that if Trump wins and Republicans keep the chamber, there will be “huge” health care reform. “No Obamacare?” exclaimed one attendee at the campaign event. “No to Obamacare,” Johnson said.
He added: “The anti-corruption law is deeply rooted; We need widespread reform to make this work. And we have lots of ideas on how to do that.
During a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September, Trump did not provide details, but said he had “concepts” of the plan. It has not been shared publicly.
Trump has tried, and failed, during his time in the White House to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but it is clear that retooling the health care system remains a priority for Republicans.
This is a good point to point out that no matter what Trump promises to Kennedy and Musk, and no matter what Johnson hopes to do on health care, the reality of the US government makes it difficult to achieve radical change.
The Senate minority, assuming it is larger than 40 members, could block any attempt to roll back the Affordable Care Act. The Senate is supposed to confirm senior officials such as Cabinet secretaries, though Trump and other presidents have found ways around that rule in the Constitution. It is not clear whether Kennedy has found the votes to be confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services or whether Trump will nominate him. If Kennedy had a role in the White House, his ability to bring about comprehensive change would be limited.
While presidents have power over the federal workforce and Trump was working to reclassify many federal employees to make it easier to fire them when he was president, the “starting from scratch” scenario would theoretically require congressional approval.
That doesn’t mean we can say with any certainty what will require congressional approval because, unlike the detailed 2025 project plan, there are no details that fit into any of these big ideas. At least not yet.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
