The Atlantic’s David Graham recently published a piece on Project 2025. Full disclosure: I love the Atlantic (for the most part), and I really admire David Graham’s work. But there was something that stuck out, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Then I read Andra Watkins’ latest piece on her Substack (HERE). The thing is, the mainstream media — even our most trusted sources — are still getting Project 2025 and the people behind it wrong.
Graham quoted Russ Douthat, the NYT columnist and right-wing Christian, by saying (I’m paraphrasing) that with the White Christian Nationalists at the head of our government, Christianity is just a red herring. It’s window dressing. Their real objective is policy.
But if you scratch the surface even a little bit, you can see that this exulted policy they speak of is the product of their (white) Christian nationalist belief system. There is no window dressing to be had. They are fundamentalist true-believers. Period.
It’s like saying smoking three packs of cigarettes a day for 40 years is just window dressing on lung cancer. But no. The lung cancer is the result of the smoking.
The extremist policy is the result of the extremist beliefs.
Sam & Andra went live on NYE to mark the end of the year that will become known as the period in American history when we took a turn towards white Christian nationalism in a very organized, methodical way.
In all dramatic cultural changes in any country, the forces that shape the change swirl about for years or even decades. But usually, when you look back, you pinpoint a single year when those forces locked into place.
The crash of 1929 (or 2008) didn’t spring out of nowhere. But we look at ‘29 as the year everything coalesced.
Could be 2025 will be that year. But it could also be that 2026 will take the title. We’ll have to wait and see.
For a deeper dive, watch Sam & Andra’s conversation, and let us know what you think in the comments.
We’ll re-air this conversation live at its regular time: Sunday, January 4th at 11am Eastern.
HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! We’re excited to tackle 2026 with all of you!
The GOP's White Grievance Politics Made Trump Inevitable
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from Stuart Stevens’ book, It Was All a Lie.
