The problem is that he was likely joking. It’s a shitty joke on our end but Walsh is deliberately using people’s panic to make fun of the media and the left in general.
The point of the joke was to trigger alarms and make people write dumb articles about it. Then he can point and laugh about how his joke triggered you and also turn accusations about Project 2025 into a hyperbole that the left uses. From then on the phrase will be easily ignored by moderates as an overreaction from the left. Because in this case it is an overreaction, he’s clearly trying to scare people.
Just keep in mind that this is a common tactic they employ to take the sting out of certain terms and to keep their base unaware of the BS. It’s why the left can’t rally around phrases like the right can.
I don’t disagree with your analysis of what he’s doing, but I don’t think he’s joking in the sense that he doesn’t mean it. He’s “joking” in the “haha just kidding… unless? 👀” sense.