The mainstream media is beginning to catch on to the existential danger to democracy posed by Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump administration. Why is Donald Trump denying that he knows anything about Project 2025? With Project 2025 starting to be scrutinized and exposed for its blueprint toward autocracy, Trump’s recent disavowals is a crass attempt to moderate his message.
And why is the mainstream media — egged on by the well-coordinated right wing media-sphere — focusing so much attention on Joe Biden’s mental acuity, while, as Heather Cox Richardson recently noted, “Trump has frequently slurred his words or trailed off while speaking and repeatedly fell asleep at his own criminal trial, [yet] none of the [numerous stories about Biden] mentioned Trump’s mental fitness?”
The focus on Biden’s cognitive health appears to be bringing out unadulterated hubris of Project 2025s leaders. On July 2, in a classic case of not knowing when to STFU, a cocky Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts assured Trump ally Steve Bannon’s followers that they are winning in what he called “the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
In March, Roberts told former Trump administration official and now right-wing media figure Sebastian Gorka about Project 2025: “There are parts of the plan that we will not share with the Left: the executive orders, the rules and regulations. Just like a good football team we don’t want to tip off our playbook to the Left.”
As is his wont, Trump, suddenly feeling the heat, is trying to distance himself from Project 2025. On his social media platform, Trump insisted that he “know[s] nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” the post read. After denying knowing anything about it, he then convolutedly stated: “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Trump’s denial/acknowledgement was reminiscent of his claim during a 2020 debate with Biden that he knew nothing about the ultra-right Proud Boys, while telling them to “stand back and stand by.” It was also reminiscent of Trump’s claim, when asked in 2016 by CNNs Jake Tapper if he would disavow support for his campaign by David Duke and other white supremacist groups, said: “Just so you understand , I don’t know anything about David Duke, OK?”
Shortly after Trump’s social media post, Project 2025 posted on social media that they “do not speak for any candidate,” Richardson reported.
According to Richardson, “Juliet Jeske of Decoding Fox News noted that Trump’s name shows up on more than 190 pages of the Project 2025 playbook.”
As Richardson pointed out, Trump supporter’s finger prints are all over Project 2025:
“Rebekah Mercer, who sits on the board of the Heritage Foundation, was one of Trump’s top donors in 2016; her family founded and operated Cambridge Analytica, the company that misused the data of millions of Facebook users to push pro-Trump and anti-Clinton material in 2016. Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has appeared in a Project 2025 video. Trump’s own super PAC has been running ads promoting Project 2025, calling it ‘Trump’s Project 2025,’ and many of its policies—killing the Department of Education, erasing the separation of church and state, ending renewable energy programs and ramping up use of fossil fuels, deporting immigrants—are also Trump’s.
“Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, as well as both of its associate directors, Spencer Chretien and Troup Hemenway, were in charge of personnel in Trump’s White House, and the theme of Project 2025 is that ‘people are policy,’ by which they mean that hand-picked loyalists must replace civil servants. Trump’s former body man John McEntee, who reentered the White House as a senior advisor after having to leave because he failed a background check, was in charge of hiring in the last months of the Trump White House; he helped to draft Project 2025. Key Trump ally Russell Vought wrote the section of Project 2025 that called for an authoritarian leader; he is also on the platform committee of the Republican National Convention.”
As former chair of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele wrote, “Since [Project 2025] is designed to institutionalize Trumpism and you know nothing about it, then why do you echo some of its policy priorities during your rallies? Coincidence? And how exactly don’t you know that Project 2025 Director Paul Dans served as your chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, and Associate Director Spencer Chretien served as your special assistant and associate director of presidential personnel? And folks say we should be worried about Biden.”
Project 2025 reflects Trump's stated goals for a potential second term, emphasizing executive control over federal agencies and aggressive conservative policy changes. Regardless of whether Biden stays in the race, the anti-Democratic agenda of the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump administration, and Trump’s deep connections to it need to continue to be exposed.