Trump Can't Disavow Project 2025

Published with the generous permission of Amee Vanderpool. For more of Amee's work, visit her Shero newsletter.

By Amee Vanderpool

A supporter holds a Project 2025 fan in the group’s tent at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 14, 2023. (Photo by Charlie Neibergall/via Getty Images)

Donald Trump is now trying to claim that he knows nothing about the controversial conservative agenda that is meant to go into place on “Day One” of another Trump presidency. The extensive plan, which was developed by the prominent Trump supporting Heritage Foundation, lays out a blueprint for a complete overhaul of the federal government, detailing a strategy for immediately firing thousands of civil servants, expanding the executive powers of the president, halting all sales of the abortion pill, and much, much more.

Although Trump has recently attempted to distance himself publicly from his own custom-made agenda, he has continued for months at his rallies to make dog whistle promises that include the main tenants of this conservative policy. On May 1, at a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Trump made the following promises to his supporters:

“With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists.”

This message forms the basis of Project 2025 policy, which seeks to overhaul the government workforce with Trump loyalists and deliver major wins for the conservative agenda by gutting federal agencies entirely and rolling back Civil Rights protections. If Trump were to win the election this year, the only recourse from this kind of agenda would be through the US Supreme Court, which has already proven its fidelity to many of the Project 2025 policies, including strengthened presidential immunity and limiting the power of federal agencies.

A demonstrator supports Project 2025 outside of the United States Supreme Court on July Fourth in Washington, DC. (Photo by Aashish Kiphayet/via Getty Images)

In short, Project 2025 would ensure that Trump’s next attempt at a total power grab would be much more seamless and successful than his last, with many of the previous obstacles taken out of his way. Last Thursday, before the start of the Republican National Convention, Trump issued a post on his Truth Social platform which read: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it.”

“The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part,” he continued in his post. “By now, after all of these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERYTHING!” On Friday, he issued another statement saying: "I know nothing about Project 2025…I have no idea who is behind it.”

Compare these latest Trump statements to the one he made in April 2022, at a dinner sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, when he praised the work of the group responsible for Project 2025 saying: “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.” That statement makes it clear that Donald Trump knows about the mission he now claims to disavow and that he supports it wholeheartedly.

Contrary to recent protests, Donald Trump also knows exactly who is behind Project 2025, because it was created by many of his most trusted allies and former advisors, who ultimately wrote the plan for him. The plan sets out four main policy aims to install an extreme, far-right agenda that includes: restoring the family as the center piece of American life; dismantling the administrative state; defending the nation's sovereignty and borders; and securing God-given individual rights to live freely. Look for Trump to manipulate the language of these basic tenants in his ongoing speeches, which are ultimately a signal to his support of the 2025 agenda.

A Heritage Foundation welcome sign for the Republican National Convention (RNC) is seen at the Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport on July 12, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/via Getty Images)

In January of 2018, just a year into his first term, the Heritage Foundation bragged that the Trump administration had “embraced nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations from the “Mandate for Leadership,” which ultimately became “Project 2025.” But the team that created the project is chock full of former Trump advisers, including director Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management while Trump was president.

Russell Vought, who was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump from July 2020 to January 2021, wrote a key chapter on future executive branch staffing for Project 2025, and also serves as the Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform policy director. The Heritage Foundation touts that “more than 350 leading conservatives” contributed to the plan, including many that would be hugely influential in Washington if Republicans take back the White House.

Graphic taken from the Project 2025 website, which lays out the missive of the conservative agenda. (Photo via screen grab.)

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts appeared on the War Room podcast in February, an outlet founded by Trump advisor Steve Bannon that is used to propel the principles of Project 2025. In that episode Roberts stated that the agenda was “prepared by a slew of Trump administration alums,” as he bragged about creating the strategy for Trump.

Roberts also fueled the idea of increased political violence on the Bannon podcast in another appearance on July, 2 saying: "We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." Roberts also bragged that the Republicans who are responsible for creating Project 2025 are “in the process of taking this country back.” Disclaimer: Bannon was not able to conduct the July interview personally, because he is currently serving prison time for his continued loyalty to Trump by refusing to comply with a Congressional subpoena.

People walk past a Heritage Foundation welcome sign for the Republican National Convention (RNC) at the Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport on July 12, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/via Getty Images)

In the last few weeks, the Biden Campaign has made a point to direct the public to the goals of the conservative plan — which is backed by more than 100 far right groups — to warn of the potential danger involved with a second Trump presidency. The increased concern over the far right agenda, which appeared to rise in tandem with Trump’s slight edge in the polls following the presidential debate, has now gone viral and is getting a lot of backlash. This has made it a little more difficult for the Republican Party to outwardly adopt Project 2025 as planned at the RNC this week.

Most party platforms tend to average between 50- to 75-pages, according to historians. The Republican Party has issued a formal platform that is 16 pages long, and it makes extensive use of capital letters to somehow mirror Donald Trump’s own speaking and social media posting tone. Many of the concepts and directives seem intentionally vague, as if to be filled in by a more substantial, 900 page companion agenda that fleshes out the real intentions of the Republican Party under Trump’s continued leadership.

Democrats are leaning into the Trump-aligned “Project 2025” as a source of potential attacks against the ex-president and his campaign (Photo by Andrew Feinberg /via Getty Images)

While it may have been the intention of RNC Director Russell Vought and other key Heritage Foundation members for the GOP to formally adopt Project 2025 at the convention this week, they might just keep the connection between the two agendas implied and forgo drawing more attention to the unpopular far right plan. Using the Project 2025 agenda as an Appendix to the Republican Platform put forth this year is the only thing that explains why anyone would put forth such a slapdash and incomprehensible official agenda like the one presented by the RNC this week.

Despite Donald Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the substantial conservative opus generated by the Heritage Foundation that he has publicly praised and acknowledged in the past, nothing happens on a large scale within the GOP without Trump’s express consent. Moving forward we can expect the rhetoric to change slightly and become even more obfuscated, as Trump and JD Vance continue to sell Project 2025 under a more generic premise that they think distances them from the conservative manifesto.

The Republican National Convention stage as seen in Milwaukee Wisconsin on Jul 16, 2024. (Photo via Getty Images)

Given what we usually hear from Trump, it should remain as unintelligible as ever, but peppered with big-boy words like “nationalist” and “deep state” and “globalists.” Most Trump supporters, who don’t really understand what these principles mean to begin with, should have no problem connecting the obvious dots.