I spoke to the Boston Globe’s Sam Brodey for his piece about Project 2025 and its utility for the embattled Biden campaign.

Some Republicans see the political calculations at play and grant they could be effective. Liam Donovan, a longtime GOP staffer and lobbyist, said the focus on Project 2025 could “keep the heat off [Biden] long enough to get him through this stretch.”If Biden does, Donovan predicted Project 2025 could remain a Democratic rallying cry. “It’s like it’s, Remember the Alamo, right?” he said. “It’s going to be a pithy phrase that serves as a call to, ‘I don’t care how you feel about Joe Biden or whether you feel like voting … it’s too important because of Project 2025.’”

This deserves its own post, because the hysteria over what is a pretty standard, public facing, and transparent thought leadership effort by a well-known and well-credentialed think tank is totally over the top, but the strategy is clear, and rather clever. Rather than handwaving about the fate of democracy or other cringe hyperbole, Dems now have a shorthand for how to point to the policy stakes of this election, a single phrase that can redirect from frustration with Biden to fear of Trump. It has clearly found traction on the left, and the Trump campaign is not taking any chances, distancing themselves from the exercise, as they have done with all unsanctioned transition efforts as far back as last year. One thing I haven’t seen noted elsewhere as the story picks up steam is that the official Trump Transition will be up and running soon, with a team sanctioned both by the campaign, and by the U.S. Government via the Presidential Transition Act. Not as much fun as the Heritage bogeyman, but at some level more revealing.

I spoke to Joseph Zeballos-Roig for his Semafor piece with Jordan Weissman on the massive tax policy stakes of the 2024 election. In their comprehensive look at the looming “Super Bowl of Tax,” they asked me who is most influential in Trump’s orbit on these issues. (I don’t think they took my answer of “the last person he talked to” as seriously as it easily intended.) My response:

“He gravitates toward donors and other people he views as successful; people he sees on CNBC and Fox Business; and people he trusts as loyal whose positions line up with his instincts,” said Liam Donovan, a GOP strategist. “That’s the Venn Diagram, and it sometimes results in a hodgepodge of policy prescriptions.”

Read the full piece here.

I joined NPR‘s A Martinez on Morning Edition to discuss the Trump campaign’s sudden annexation of the Republican National Committee.

NPR’s A Martinez talks with Republican strategist Liam Donovan about former President Donald Trump’s tightening grip on the Republican National Committee.

Listen to the full interview here.

I spoke to David Freedlander for his New York Magazine piece on the new-look Trump campaign and its formidable senior staff:

Trump has notoriously liked setting aides against each other, vying for his affection, like when he made Reince Priebus his first White House chief of staff and Steve Bannon “chief strategist” with both of them leaving the new administration within seven months. But people close to Trump today say that even he is tired of the antics, and with the 2024 election now possibly determining whether or not he goes to prison, he has opted for a more professional approach.

“2016 was a totally shambolic operation, just a guy on a plane surrounded by a rotating cast of jokers,” says Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist. “By 2020, you had a more professionalized operation, but the campaign was led by his web designer until the home stretch. He came close with the B-team, and now we get to see what happens when you bring in some of the most shrewd, calculating, and ruthless operators in the party.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Maggie Haberman for her New York Times story with Jonathan Swan on the political implications of the various Trump criminal proceedings.

Yet Mr. Trump was elected in 2016 despite a lengthy trail of negative incidents related to his character. And polls vary on how many of his supporters who say they will back him would abandon him if he is convicted in a criminal case.

“After the past eight years, that self-selection alone is enough to tell you they won’t have much trouble explaining away an adverse legal ruling, let alone one on dubious grounds,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist.

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Read the full piece here.

It’s a bit too glib to say LOL nothing matters–conviction is bad, full stop, and given the profound closeness of the past two elections, a stiff breeze could swing the electoral college one way or another.

But at the end of the day, the diminishing poll of Trump supporters who tell pollsters they would reconsider in the event of a hypothetical conviction are still people willing to say they’d support Trump. Intuitively that would be a meaningful threshold, and when you dig into the data, these tend to be strong Republican leaners who are likely to come home when faced with a binary choice.