Minnesota Sixth District Republican Congressman Tom Emmer, the House Whip, got his chance to fire up the crowd at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee Tuesday night.
In an impassioned speech, he claimed Vice President Kamala Harris encouraged and enabled what he called "the criminals and the rioters" during the civil unrest in the city after George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin.
Wednesday, Emmer spoke to WCCO's Susie Jones in Milwaukee and was asked about what has become a hot topic leading into the Election, Project 2025.
The 900 page plan seems to set out a drastic reshaping of the federal government to benefit the political brand of Donald Trump, created by people closely allied with his campaign and funded by the influential Heritage Foundation.
Emmer says it's just a shiny object to distract from the real work Republicans doing in Congress and on the campaign trail. And, he says he knows nothing about it.
"I have no idea. Donald Trump has said he doesn't know anything about it," claims Emmer. "I can tell you honestly, I don't know anything about it. You know what we're doing. I think that's a media construct. They're looking for any shiny object to try and go after it because they have nothing to run against Donald Trump on except the hatred they've been promoting. So now it's this mysterious thing that they pulled out of out of the air."
The Heritage Foundation is a Washington-based thinktank and according to John Hinderaker of the Center Of The American Experiment, there's nothing controversial about the document and he says hundreds of people collaborated on it in the hopes a more conservative administration comes into power in 2025.
"There have been several prior mandates for leadership. The first one was in 1980 and in fact the Reagan Administration did implement a number of them," Hinderaker told WCCO's Vineeta Sawkar. "I have no idea why this controversy has come up."
The handbook from the conservative Heritage Foundation and more than 100 like-minded groups looks to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.
When reception to the plan was cool, Trump began to distance himself from it, writing on Truth Social, "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.”
Emmer says he is only concerned with what they're doing in Washington.
"But you know what we're doing, we're already working on reconciliation to start the next Congress," he said. "We're working on what we have to do in the first 100 days. I know nothing about what people are working on outside of Congress. But I do know what we're working on."
Emmer also told Jones that the country can't have four more years of the Biden-Harris agenda.
"I mean, they tell you that the economy is doing great 20% inflation in the last three and a half years," says Emmer. "The average American is spending $1,000 a month more than they did before Joe Biden came into office. Housing, housing is unaffordable and credit card debt is at an all-time high. So that economy doesn't work."