But the usefulness of Project 2025 is an effort to tie Trump to policies that used to be part of mainstream GOP platforms, but that Trump isn't openly and proudly embracing. If they can pull it off, it lets them run their greatest hits from past campaigns.

I don't think they can pull it off.

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Because too much attention is being fixated on the presumed power and influence of a single person.

1) Trump 1.0 had the highest churn of top staff of any Administration
2) Trump praised every one of his choices as the best...
3) ...until they were denigrated as losers after qitting or getting fired (dude... YOU hired them...)
4) Ergo, Trump cannot argue he hires the best and brightest - just listen to him describe his own choices
5) Trump Administration 2.0 will have HIGHER churn if he destroys civil service protections
6) Ergo Trump and his direct appointees will be doing MORE hiring than in the past
7) More hiring means MORE GARBAGE IN -- into positions of power
8) Trump has the attention span of a gnat - easily distracted / manipulated by anything that flatters him or threatens him
9) An entire cabinet chosen from people willing to work for Trump will be well versed in psychologically manipulating someone of Trump's temperment
10) Ergo, it will be child's play for Administration officials to play caroms off Trump's combination of incompetence and psychopathy to initiate actions far afield from whatever Trump claims to support
11) Ergo, more corrupt officials expert in distracting their boss with fewer civil service protections and decimated Constitutional protections against a criminal President means MORE GARBAGE OUT of government to harm Americans -- their financial safety, their health, their civil rights, their childrens' future in a world where America cedes entire countries to Russian aggression.

Americans should stop focusing on the buffoon at the top of the ticket and PAY ATTENTION TO THE ENTIRE CHESS BOARD and all the players. Even if Trump wins re-election, takes office and immediately degenerates into a golf-playing vegetable, the ethical and moral flotsam and jetsam that follows him into office will be sufficient to destroy nearly one hundred years of progress in creating a better balance between the powers of giant corporations and the uber wealthy and individual Americans.

WTH