Democrats were laser-focused on Project 2025 during this week’s Democratic National Convention, devoting segments each night to describing the different policy disasters that are part of the extremist blueprint for a second Donald Trump administration.
And being tied to Project 2025 continues to freak the hell out of Trump. On Thursday, he even went to his favorite cable news refuge, “Fox & Friends,” to claim ignorance yet again.
“I have no idea what Project 25 is, but they use it, and they know it.” Trump said. While hate-watching Vice President Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech Thursday night, he posted about the right-wing scheme again on Truth Social.
The most hilarious evidence of his panic has to be this GOP mailer that hit mailboxes in Michigan this week.
The denial is in bright blue and red letters: “Straight from Trump’s Platform,” it says. “NOT PROJECT 2025, WHICH TRUMP DIDN’T WRITE AND DOES NOT SUPPORT.”
Oh, Donald—still fighting these inconvenient truths about The Heritage Foundation’s scheme. Like the fact that the project’s chief architect admitted on hidden camera that Trump has given them his blessing.
Or the story this week from CBS News, headlined “Hundreds of proposals in Project 2025 match Trump's policies.” CBS “identified at least 270 proposals in Project 2025's published blueprint for the next Republican president that match Trump's past policies and current campaign promises.” Those include: bringing back at least 80 of Trump’s executive orders from his tenure; 170 Project 2025 proposals that are on Trump’s website or that he talks about in speeches; and another 21 that “match both Trump's past actions and his campaign promises and statements.”
That builds on this July story from CNN, titled “Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found that at least 140 people who worked for him are involved.” For starters, CNN found that six former Cabinet secretaries, four Trump ambassador nominees, his first deputy chief of staff, and “several enforcers of his controversial immigration crackdown” had helped craft Project 2025.
This is a serious case of the gentleman protesting too much. And it’s hilariously ironic that the more he insists it has nothing to do with him, the deeper journalists dig—the Streisand Effect in action. Trump isn’t credible on just about anything, but on this one, he’s lost the battle. Fox News might indulge his repeated disavowals, but it won’t work: Trump and Project 2025 have become inextricably linked.
Trump’s campaign keeps yammering on about how Harris has no policies—as if they want this to be an election about policy. But now that Project 2025’s proposed policies are on everyone’s lips, they’re panicked by that. Trump’s cronies at The Heritage Foundation put it all out there on paper, and everybody hates it. Even worse for Republicans, people are now likely to cast their votes with Project 2025 in mind.
That makes the Democrats’ strategy of putting the focus on it very smart. This is Trump’s vision for another term in the White House, and the people who wrote it are the people who would enforce it if given the chance.
Like vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, Minnesota governor and former high school football coach, said: “When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, trust me, they're gonna use it.”
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