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In the Sherlock Holmes mystery The Adventure of Silver Blaze, the case turns on one piece of evidence: a dog that doesn't bark. That's also what will happen at next week's Republican National Convention. The most important thing to know won't be heard at all.
The piece that they will be at pains not to say is what former President Donald Trump actually plans to do if he gets back into office.
The funny thing is, we already know his true plan. It's captured in a massive document called Project 2025 developed by cadre of 100 right-wing groups, and overseen by the arch-conservative Heritage Foundation, which over the last 50 years has been more responsible than any other group for dragging the Republican Party to the far-right policy fringes.
The plan is unique in American history both for its enormous detail—as Ben Olinski of the Center for American Progress puts it "it's rare that you get to see a full 900 page governing agenda" before a new administration—and sheer chutzpah. The authors don't hide the ball. Rather, they flood the zone with a mélange of equal parts right wing manifesto, special interest group prepayment plan, and authoritarian takeover blueprint.
It's hard to pick lowlights from all that. But here are three:
Project 2025 would turn the entire federal government into a political reward machine for the MAGA faithful. It fleshes out a scheme to fire tens of thousands of nonpartisan civil servants and replace them with Trump stans who have literally been pre-cleared with a loyalty questionnaire (there are 20,000 identified so far). Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who has chaired the congressional committee that oversees the civil service, warns the result would be a de facto Trump loyalty test for everyone: "Social Security, the IRS, the Veterans Administration...they're going to have a list of preferred beneficiaries. You're not on that list if you're a Democrat. They're going to put MAGA people at the top for getting their benefits or getting preferred treatment in hospitalization. You may never see your tax refund, ever."
Second is a grab bag of federal agency-gutting meant to help business interests and placate social conservatives. The plan issues the death penalty for any federal program or action meant to fight global warming. It aims to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lest, you know, consumers get protected from usury. But usury is the one biblical prohibition that the document seems to like, since it calls for a "biblically based" approach to social policy. Hence, no more mifepristone (i.e. the abortion pill) from the FDA. No more transgender Americans in the military. No more Department of Education.
Third, the plan calls for putting law enforcement under the president's thumb, turning the Justice Department and FBI into "an attack dog for conservative causes." They might as well just say "police state."
All of which is why we won't hear about it at the Republican convention, and instead, will get pre-fabbed pieces of the Republican Party platform, a watered-down document that cribs from Trump's sinister-sounding Agenda 47 videos and reads like the kind of verbal word salad one typically associates with a Trump rally. They even conveniently wrote it using the Truth Social Book of Style, putting key planks in all caps to make clear that we should picture Donald Trump screaming them at the top of his lungs: "CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY. END THE WEAPONIZATION OF GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. UNITE OUR COUNTRY BY BRINGING IT TO NEW AND RECORD LEVELS OF SUCCESS."
In other words, expect the kind of political pablum that appeals to the base plus truthy statements that no swing voter could reasonably object to: END INFLATION, AND MAKE AMERICA AFFORDABLE AGAIN (notwithstanding that under President Joe Biden the United States has blown away all the other developed nations on earth in beating inflation while growing the economy) or MAKE AMERICA THE DOMINANT ENERGY PRODUCER IN THE WORLD, BY FAR! (Biden's America has already expanded its lead as the world's leading energy producer).
In The Twilight Zone's greatest episode, the Earth-invading aliens somewhat comically walk around literally carrying their evil plan (spoiler alert: "To Serve Man" is not a guide for effective altruism, it's a cookbook). So why is the Trump team doing the same darn thing? (side note to Trump campaign: spare us the Project 2025 disavowals—27 of the 37 plan's authors are close Trump confidantes, and Heritage brags that two-thirds of its last policy agenda got adopted by the first Trump administration).
The answer is that Trump needs this kind of detailed menu for Republican activists, donors, and affiliated groups so that they know exactly what they will get if they hold their noses and vote for a Trump presidency again. As the Atlantic's Mark Leibovich—the leading chronicler of Republican Party Trump enablers—said: "In private, the vast majority of people in the Republican Party leadership—the people who go on TV to defend him—are fully aware of what they're dealing with, the malignancy of it, the absurdity of it. Republicans have been living in the lie of who Donald Trump really is."
Most sentient Republicans who are paying attention and yet still voting for Trump are doing so in a Faustian bargain. They want to know, in great detail, what the payoff will be in exchange for their souls. We've even seen this exact playbook before. When Republican insiders had their doubts in 2016, Trump's campaign strategically released a list of potential Supreme Court nominees. The quid pro quo couldn't have been clearer.
That's how we ended up with the most frightening governing plan ever written that also isn't there. A quintessential Trump cabal document—playing to all of his vendettas, retribution agendas, and persecution fever dreams—that he says he's not sure he agrees with and it's authors pretend they didn't write. An obvious plea to right-wing business and social interests that hides in plain sight. A hate that dares not speak its name.
It's the centerpiece of everything Trumpism has become that you just won't hear about.
Matt Robison is a writer, podcast host, and former congressional staffer.
The views in this article are the writer's own.
