For months, Democrats have tried to let the public know about Project 2025, a right-wing policy agenda being crafted by the Heritage Foundation with the assistance of several prominent Donald Trump associates. Earlier this month, however, Democrats received some unexpected help — from the former president himself.
A few weeks ago, the Republican nominee published an odd item to his social media platform claiming to “know nothing” about Project 2025. He went on to claim he has “no idea who is behind it,” he disagrees with some of its provisions, and he has “nothing to do with” the initiative.
Democrats were delighted: Trump’s denial helped bring attention to the Project 2025 plan, which is exactly what the party was hoping for. The former president nevertheless issued a similar statement a week later, which again helped to push the radical blueprint into the national spotlight.
At a rally in Michigan this past weekend, the GOP candidate not only tried to distance himself from Project 2025, he also described its authors as part of the “severe right,” adding that some of the agenda’s provisions are “seriously extreme.” Trump reiterated his position online again yesterday.
All of this has the effect of alerting the public to the right-wing agenda’s existence — which again is what Democrats are hoping for — while simultaneously reminding voters that the Project 2025 is so extreme that even Trump doesn’t want to be associated with it.
But there’s a related problem: The more Trump tries to distance himself from Project 2025, the more we’re confronted with evidence pointing in the opposite direction. A Media Matters report explained:
Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, recently named as Donald Trump’s running mate, wrote the foreword to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ forthcoming book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, the proceeds for which will partly benefit Heritage. The Heritage Foundation is leading Project 2025, a far-right staffing and policy initiative backed by more than 100 conservative groups that seeks to remake the federal government into a vehicle for Trumpism and would severely inhibit protections around reproductive rights, LGBTQ and civil rights, and immigration, as well as climate change efforts.
Well, that certainly won’t help.
Complicating matters, a recent CNN report explained that “at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025 … including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to ‘Mandate for Leadership,’ the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch.”
What’s more, NBC News tracked down a 2022 speech in which Trump spoke at a Heritage Foundation event and said, “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do … when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.” In case that weren’t quite enough, Media Matters also discovered that Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official and the director of Project 2025, told a right-wing podcast last year that his group has a “great” relationship with the former president and that “Trump’s very bought in with this.” I can appreciate why Trump doesn’t want to be associated with Project 2025 — most voters would find the agenda to be almost cartoonishly extreme — but his denials keep running up against reality. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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