MRFF’s Mikey Weinstein on Project 2025

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/07/16

*Full biographical sketch at the end of the interview.*

Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein is the undisputed leader of the national movement to restore the obliterated wall separating church and state in the most technologically lethal organization ever created by humankind: the United States armed forces. Described by Harper’s magazine as “the constitutional conscience of the U.S. military, a man determined to force accountability”, Mikey’s family has a long and distinguished U.S. military history spanning three consecutive generations of military academy graduates and over 130 years of combined active duty military service in every major combat  engagement our country has been in from World War I to the current Global War on Terror. Mikey is a 1977 Honor Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. Mikey has been married  for 47 years to his wife, Bonnie. He is the proud parent of two sons, one daughter, two granddaughters, and one grandson. His oldest son and daughter-in-law are 2004 Graduates. Seven  total members of Mikey’s family have attended the Academy. His father was a distinguished graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Mikey served for more than 10 years with the Judge Advocate  General (“JAG”) Corps. A registered Republican, he also spent over three years working in, and for, the West Wing of the  Reagan Administration as legal counsel in the White House. In his final position there, Mikey was named the Committee Management Officer of the much-publicized Iran-Contra Investigation in his capacity as Assistant General Counsel of The White House Office of Administration, Executive Office of the President of the United States. Mikey has held numerous positions in corporate America as a senior executive businessman and attorney.  After stints at prominent law firms in both New York City and Washington D.C., Mikey served as the first General Counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and  Perot Systems Corporation. He left Mr. Perot’s employ in 2006 to focus his fulltime attention on the nonprofit charitable foundation he founded to directly battle the far-right militant radical evangelical religious fundamentalists: the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. (http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org)  

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We are here today with MRFF’s Mikey Weinstein. It is particularly important to talk about humanism as it relates to the American military, given its presence on the international stage and concerning political moments. One of those is Project 2025. It’s very open regarding Project 2025 and its policy playbook for the American military or proposed plans. What are some of the highlights that should be particularly important to certain liberal Christians, non-religious people, and others?

Mikey Weinstein: Well, I can’t describe every point in detail. However, I want to clarify to your readers that when we say Project 2025, they should consider it a dynamic. 

The fact that Trump claims he knew nothing about it, despite being a pathological liar, underscores what it is. Project 2025 will, among many other things, decapitate the military and civilian leadership in the Department of Defense and replace them with MAGA robots. It is designed to destroy diversity, equity, and inclusion. There is almost no more diverse organization in America, let alone the world, than the U.S. military. Even in the day, the British Empire, or the British military, was very diverse, given how big the empire was. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) contribute to unit cohesion. As our Supreme Court has made clear, examining our military involves doing whatever we can to maximize good order, morale, discipline, and unit cohesion. 

Suppose you try to destroy the teaching of DEI or concepts like critical race theory, which helps understand where everybody comes from. In that case, you are not just undermining but wretchedly disassembling the essence of what allows our military structure to be productive and lethal enough to protect the full panoply of constitutional rights for all our citizenry. It will also target and attempt to destroy anything involving LGBTQIA+ issues. I could go on and on, but most importantly, it is about placing racist appointees. I was a political appointee of the Reagan White House, and it was Schedule C; now, it will be Schedule F throughout the U.S. military and do the same with the military leadership. Your readership needs to remember something.

When they read this interview, some may not know about the military structure, including officers and enlisted personnel. When you graduate from Annapolis, West Point, the Air Force Academy, ROTC, OCS, the Coast Guard Academy, or the Merchant Marine Academy, you come in at the lowest level as an officer, at O-1, an ensign, or a second lieutenant. At that moment, you outrank 90% of the military because you’re an officer, and the military has its criminal code called the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Insubordination is considered a felony, but that’s not the only felony in the military. If you have sexual intercourse with someone other than your spouse, adultery is a felony.

Why? Because it destroys physical intimacy, good order, morale, and discipline. If you’re ordered to go to the main dentist at 1600 hours and don’t go, that could be a felony. So, it’s bad enough when you find the filthy, wretched, evil, vile fingers of Project 2025 in police forces, firefighters, rescue workers, sewage workers, legislators, and public officials. However, when you find it in the U.S. military, that is where it becomes not just an issue, problem, or challenge but a true national security threat internally to our country, every bit as dangerous as what we’re facing externally from Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, Ayatollah Khomeini, Victor Orban, any of these autocrats, and course, ISIS, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. This isn’t some small thing. The average American has no clue about Project 2025.

They’re not even trying to hide it, Scott. Hitler tried, in many ways, to keep things in the shadows, but Project 2025 has hundreds of former Trump White House colleagues writing it. Of course, it’s the wet dream of the Heritage Foundation, with, I guess, disgusting, sexless bandits. This makes this interview hard for people to understand.

They have their playbook out there. Why did they do this? When they suddenly came into power in 2017, they didn’t expect to win. They didn’t know what to do. They didn’t understand the bureaucracy. But now, they’re going to fire anybody who could be in their way and replace them with loyalists who will be around forever.

And, again, when you attack diversity, equity, and inclusion, or LGBT, women, or whatever, you’re destroying the essence of our military. You’re destroying it very, very quickly. However, Project 2025 does many other things that destroy American society. But in this particular interview, we’re talking about the technologically most lethal organization ever created by our species, homo sapiens, the United States military.

Let’s remember that our species is new on this planet. Relatively, in anthropological and archaeological chronology, we’re new. Civilizations are even newer, maybe two and a half thousand years old. So what you’re finding here with Project 2025 mixed into where all of our laser-guided and conventional and nuclear weapons are is a recipe not for slow disaster but for disaster going at light speed. And that is my answer to your question, my brother Scott. I want to say, for reference, that we represent over 89,000 members of the U.S. military. Our clients range from E-1 to O-10.

Jacobsen: O-10! 

Weinstein: Yes. We have several four-star admirals and generals. We have political appointees who are civilians. Many times, we will have black officers contact us themselves, asking us to expose their organizations because they’re afraid that if they bring it out themselves, they’re going to face backlash. It’s easier for them to say, “Oh shit, MRFF has received complaints out of our command, and they’re valid. Let me address it.” You remind me of the movie. How old are you, Scott?

Weinstein: I’m 69.

Jacobsen: I’m 34.

Weinstein: Oh shit, you’re too young. Have you ever heard of an actor called Humphrey Bogart?

Jacobsen: Yes, I did.

Weinstein: Did you ever hear of one of his best movies, Casablanca, about World War II?

Jacobsen: I did hear about that movie.

Weinstein: Well, there’s a great scene in there. In the movie, he plays a character called Rick, who runs a casino, and in the movie, a French gendarme, no idea what, am I pronouncing it right? Pretending to be shocked. The same thing with these black officers that will reach out to us. We don’t condemn them, but they find it easier to have us light up their organization, including four-star admirals and four-star generals. We would never help them. They are our clients. Remember, about 95% of our 89,000-plus clients, we’ve got sailors, soldiers, Marines, airmen, guardians for the Space Force, Coast Guard, all 18 national security agencies, the U.S. Maritime Service, which is the Department of Transportation, the State Coast Guard, and the DHS, are Christians themselves being tortured for not being Christian enough. So, we are in a very much, this is a blood sport.

It’s a full-contact blood sport, and it’s always been better than it is now. We’re teetering on the end of America as we know it and the birth of Gilead out of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Are you familiar with the book?

Jacobsen:  I’m familiar with the book. She is probably one of our most prominent Canadian authors. I’m calling from Canada. 

Weinstein: She is. She’s amazing, as was her sequel to that book. And we were reached out to by the production staff of the Hulu TV show. They wanted to get our background because they wanted to do an episode very much on the Gilead military. We were very proud of that several years ago. However, the most important thing that indicates this is that Project 2025 will also target any enemy of MAGA. We’ve already been targeted. In late June of last year, we found out that the MAGA Republicans in the House of Representatives tried to amend the largest part of the federal budget. If you follow us, it’s called the National Defense Authorization Act. They tried to include language that would make it a felony under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We were talking about that a few minutes ago. For any member of the military, if you reach out to MRFF for help, it took us six months working with the Democrats on the Senate side to destroy that. But that’s it. We take that. This is the first time there’s been an instance where the U.S. did that to an American civil rights advocacy organization. They’ve never even done that to Planned Parenthood or the ACLU. Anyway, I wanted to ensure I got your piece’s input. Are you getting some good stuff here, Scott?

Jacobsen: I am. So, to your point about The Handmaid’s Tale example, they are looking to target reproductive health services within the military to pull back Biden-era policies. And you already talked about the diversity elimination, or at least those programs. So, two points of contact there. One, how extensive would this targeting of reproductive health services within the military be? And why would there then be a significant refocus on China and a transition topic?

Weinstein: Now they want to create a Christian republic. So, it’s going to be savage. An old saying in the Middle East is that a running man with one eye can swim a thousand. It’s going to move fast. They’re going to make it very clear that Christian nationalism is a primacy. There may be some mild toleration for a small amount of time for any other orthodoxy or religious entity, but you will be eliminated unless you change. There’s going to be blood spilled. You saw the people who connected with 2025 last week that we are in the process of a second American revolution, which will be bloodless if the left allows it. A great meme on the internet showed men holding down the Statue of Liberty saying, “If you don’t scream, we won’t hurt you.”

Jacobsen: Wow.

Weinstein: And those men had Republican cuff links. So look, it’s not going to be a bureaucratic thing. It’s going to be much more like a bunch of criminal gangs with knives, letting as many people get hit as possible. We expect to be targeted. We already think we are being targeted. And there will be several hundreds of others who are. We’re not going to run away. We will fight and fight as hard as we can. But it’s not a joke. And it’s not purely bureaucratic.

Jacobsen: And with regards to being a Christian republic, and then the focus on China, is part of that the identification of China not only as a communist country but as a largely non-theist country as well, having sort of non-theist philosophical grounding?

Weinstein: Yes. Well, keep in mind, please, that communist China is considered incredibly fertile ground for fundamentalist Christian dominionists to convert. That is a place that they salivate over. And so, we don’t know exactly how Trump will claim Xi Jinping and how much of a sacrifice Taiwan will be. The concepts of secularism, humanism, atheism, and agnosticism will be viewed as repugnant as possible by the Christian nationalists. Our beacon base for the 2020 climate is integrated into the very DNA of the Department of Defense. And how it is an alloy. It is inextricably intertwined. 

Jacobsen: And when they propose restructuring the State Department, they’re looking at a freeze on international agreements. They’re looking at a freeze on international agreements and withdrawal from international organizations like UNRWA for Palestinian refugees and others. How does this, along with increased defence funding for space defence capabilities, also play into this theology-turned-military politics? 

Weinstein: I don’t think you’ll see much balkanization in 2025. But your question is very good. There shouldn’t be a few boundaries between the state and DOD, the Treasury, agriculture, and the Attorney General’s office. You’re going to see a de-balkanization. You’ll see more of a monolithic pulse, a giant pulse, an explosion forward of Christian nationalism that won’t worry about the small things involving boundaries between departments. Remember, I spent over three years in the Reagan White House. I was one of his lawyers there. And Reagan was the one that ushered in the earliest stages of Christian nationalism. 40 years ago, I was a senior White House Counsel. I was the Assistant General Counsel for the White House Office of Administration. So we’re beginning to come in there. And so we will do what the Department of Defense will do. You’ll see how basic it will be regarding name and deed.

Jacobsen: Two prominent humanists in Pakistan fled to the United States and were getting master’s degrees in Chicago. Well, there are New York Times articles where they popped up after disappearing for a few months while they were in the process of fleeing from Pakistan. It was Gulalai Ismail and Saba Ismail. And they founded Aware Girls in Pakistan. When considering their context, they were coming out of a situation where the military and police, plus the fundamentalist Islamic theology, were united. Is that a Christian version of that?

Weinstein: Yes, you bring up a good point. When we first started this fight back in the early 2000s, we were very surprised to get contacted by the Far Eastern Asian News Network. It was the Kyoto News Network. We put it together with a journalist in Tokyo. And they were very interested in seeing what we were doing. They sent one of their reporters from Tokyo to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We’re headquartered in Washington, D.C., but I live in Albuquerque. They came to my house. We sat down and did an interview. And you’ll see what this is doing in a moment. 

So, we did the full interview. And the reporter was very fluent in English. I asked why you came from Tokyo to interview me about this fight that we’re doing in our U.S. military. He said, “Mr. Weinstein, we got into World War II because of a fusion of fundamentalist Shintoism with our Japanese military. We saw what happened when that went unchecked. The attack on China ultimately resulted in what happened at Pearl Harbor. We saw what happens when you merge anything.” In that case, it was fundamentalist Shintoism with the Japanese military. And we are terrified to see what’s happening with this fundamentalist Christianity moving into the U.S. military. We were the only people in the early 2000s screaming about this. I’ve had several people say that they look back now, and I’m not doing this to pat ourselves on the back, but we have over a thousand people who work at MRFF now, including many civil rights organizations. Most are volunteers. We have MRFF representatives on nuclear submarines, nuclear aircraft carriers, on every missile silo, on every missile base, on most of the U.S. military bases around the world. And so, we hear people say, “Oh, maybe the world will end.” After January 6th, everyone said, “Oh my God, it’s happening.” And yes, it is. And back, Scott, when you talked about the Pakistani expatriates or refugees, to what happened when the Japanese news reporter was flown out here to interview me because very few people realized that was a merging of fundamentalist Shintoism with the mighty Japanese defence force.

Jacobsen: What about a decreased effort and funding for diplomacy efforts? For a long time, your organization has been focused on proselytization efforts within the American military that are not free but coercive in many contexts. Externally, looking at other countries in terms of diplomatic efforts, diplomacy is part of any military and international affairs effort. Will there be decreased funding and effort for diplomacy in terms of the American military, too? That’s not the biggest point, but it’s a subtle context that could also be damaging.

Weinstein: Efforts will be subordinated to conquering everything they can for Jesus Christ. That’s my belief, and that’s my answer. We’re not running around like chicken noodles saying the sky is falling. The sky started falling many years ago. And I can imagine how our allies, particularly Canada, look at this in absolute shock at what is happening here. 

Jacobsen: Mikey, thank you for the interview. 

Weinstein: Excellent. Take care.

—

Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein  is the undisputed leader of the national movement to restore the obliterated wall  separating church and state in the most technologically lethal organization ever created by  humankind: the United States armed forces. Described by Harper’s magazine as “the constitutional  conscience of the U.S. military, a man determined to force accountability”, Mikey’s family has a long  and distinguished U.S. military history spanning three consecutive generations of military academy  graduates and over 130 years of combined active duty military service in every major combat  engagement our country has been in from World War I to the current Global War on Terror. Mikey is a 1977 Honor Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. Mikey has been married  for 47 years to his wife, Bonnie. He is the proud parent of two sons, one daughter, two  granddaughters, and one grandson. His oldest son and daughter-in-law are 2004 Graduates. Seven  total members of Mikey’s family have attended the Academy. His father was a distinguished graduate  of the United States Naval Academy. Mikey served for more than 10 years with the Judge Advocate  General (“JAG”) Corps.  

A registered Republican, he also spent over three years working in, and for, the West Wing of the  Reagan Administration as legal counsel in the White House. In his final position there, Mikey was  named the Committee Management Officer of the much-publicized Iran-Contra Investigation in his  

capacity as Assistant General Counsel of The White House Office of Administration, Executive Office  of the President of the United States. Mikey has held numerous positions in corporate America as a  senior executive businessman and attorney.  

After stints at prominent law firms in both New York City and Washington D.C., Mikey served as the  first General Counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and  Perot Systems Corporation. He left Mr. Perot’s employ in 2006 to focus his fulltime attention on the  nonprofit charitable foundation he founded to directly battle the far-right militant radical evangelical  religious fundamentalists: the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.  

(http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org)  

Mikey has appeared innumerable times on all of the major cable and terrestrial TV news networks  and is a frequent guest on national radio networks as well. His constitutional activism has been  covered and profiled extensively in the print media including the Associated Press, The New York  Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, the Denver Post, The Guardian, and many other  national and international newspapers and periodicals including Time magazine.  

St. Martins Press in New York released Mikey’s book, “With God On Our Side: One Man’s War  Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military” in October 2006. The paperback version was  released in February 2008 with the Foreword being written by Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV. The  book is an expose on the systemic problem of religious intolerance throughout the United States  armed forces. At this time, Mikey also made his international film debut in the Hollywood adaptation  of James Carroll’s New York Times best selling book detailing the 2,000 year bloody history between  the Church and the Jews, entitled “Constantine’s Sword”, and directed by Oscar nominee Oren  Jacoby. 

In January, 2012, Mikey’s latest book “No Snowflake in an Avalanche: The Military Religious  Freedom Foundation, its Battle to Defend the Constitution, and One Family’s Courageous War  Against Religious Extremism in High Places” was released. It details MRFF’s prominent case studies,  struggles, and the violent reactions to MRFF advocacy.  

Mikey was named one of the 50 most influential Jews in America by the Forward, one of the nation’s  preeminent Jewish publications. He also has received a nomination for the JFK’s Profile in Courage  Award and received the Buzzflash Wings of Justice Award. In addition Mikey was honored by a  distinguished civil rights organization, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, with the Rabbi Marshall  T. Meyer Risk-Taker Award for those who have taken risks in the pursuit of justice. 

In December 2012, Defense News named Mikey one of the 100 Most Influential People in U.S.  Defense. As a distinguished “Opinion shaper” exercising a hard-fought influence over the U.S. Armed  Forces, Mikey’s influence has been recognized as exceeding that of former General David Petraeus  himself by a publication that represents “the world’s biggest military newsroom.” Defense News is a  Gannett publication – as are USA Today, The Arizona Republic, Detroit Free Press, The Indianapolis  Star, The Cincinnati Enquirer, and many other prominent newspapers across the nation. Gannett  Government Media consists of Defense News, Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, Marine  Corps Times, Armed Forces Journal and Federal Times.  

Reviled by the radical fundamentalist Christian far-right, Mikey has been given many names by his  enemies including “Satan”, “Satan’s lawyer”, “the Antichrist”, “That Godless, Secular Leftist”,  “Antagonizer of All Christians”, “Most Dangerous Man in America” and “Field General of the Godless  Armies of Satan”.  

On November 7, 2011, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State presented Mikey  Weinstein with AU’s first ever Person of the Year Award. In their press release, AU describes MRFF  as “the leading voice protecting church-state separation in the military.”  

On November 13, 2014, for the sixth consecutive year, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation  was officially nominated again for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize (its seventh total nomination).

License & Copyright

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ©Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen strictly prohibited, excerpts and links must use full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with direction to the original content.