Trump's Project 2025

We know that Donald Trump was fixated on polls Friday morning. We know that because he posted about them at least 15 times on Truth social.

The horse race polls may not have been the only polling data Trump looked at, because after devoting his 11 a.m. hour to them, he posted on Truth Social that he isn’t connected to Project 2025. It was almost as though he’d seen something suggesting that the plan, which we’ve been discussing here at Civil Discourse, isn’t particularly popular with voters who are informed about it. As Rick Wilson tweeted, it’s about as popular as Ebola.

Trump claims he’s not connected to Project 2025. That seems like a convenient fiction that the Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025, maintains as well. According to the website, they’re just working on an agenda for whichever Republican president—nudge, nudge, wink, wink—comes along next. Axios reports that, “Trump himself spends little time plotting governing plans. But he is well aware of a highly coordinated campaign to be ready to jam government offices with loyalists willing to stretch traditional boundaries.” And then, there are the personal connections.

I have questions based on Trump’s post itself. How do you “know nothing” about the Project and have no idea who is behind it, but also know that you disagree with some of the things they’re saying? Perhaps some enterprising reporter will ask him what he agrees with and what he takes issue with. That would be illuminating. I’d love to know what parts he thinks are “ridiculous and abysmal.” The Biden-Harris campaign account on Twitter weighed in with this, and also tweeted that his current press secretary starred in what they called the Heritage Foundation’s “recruitment ads”:

Many of the people working on the Project and many of the chapter authors are former Trump Administration employees or allies. Like Paul Dans, who directs Heritage’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The website says he’s responsible for organizing policy and personnel recommendations and training for appointees in the next presidential administration. “Prior to joining Heritage, Dans served in the Trump Administration as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management where he managed the federal agency in charge of human resources policy for the more than two million federal workers” and was appointed by Trump to serve as Chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission.

Or, like Spencer Chretien, the Associate Director of Heritage’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project. Chretien’s Heritage Foundation bio relates that “From 2020-2021, Chretien was a Special Assistant to President Donald J. Trump and Associate Director of Presidential Personnel, helping to identify, recruit, and place hundreds of political appointees at all levels of government.” That makes it doubly interesting that one of the functions the Project 2025 website serves is to accept applications from people interested in political appointments in the next administration, the “Plum Book” positions that Heritage encourages interested people to peruse and apply for.

“Want to be considered?” the website asks, adding a big red “APPLY NOW” button at the top of the page so no one misses out on the opportunity to be considered. It seems unlikely Heritage is mounting this massive effort and screening individuals for actual positions without the presumptive Republican nominee’s approval. “Project 2025 is the effort of a massive coalition of conservative organizations that have come together to ensure a successful Administration begins in January 2025. With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government. Project 2025 is being organized by The Heritage Foundation,” the website continues. In a piece on the website discussing Project 2025, Chretien concludes that because of the powerful coalition of conservative groups behind the work, “Presidential candidates won’t be able to ignore what the conservative movement demands in this book.” Axios reports that this screening of “foot soldiers” who support Trump is serious work: “Hundreds of people are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents.”

Project 2025 chapter Authors include:

• Rick A. Dearborn, one of Trump’s Deputy Chiefs of Staff at the White House.

• Christopher Miller, who was appointed Acting Secretary of Defense by Trump on November 9, 2020, after he lost the election. He stayed in place until Joe Biden’s inauguration.

• Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s de facto head of DHS during the last last two years of the administration when he couldn’t get a Senate confirmed secretary in place.

We took up the issue of Trump’s connection to Project 2025 here on Civil Discourse on Thursday in our conversation with Congressman Jared Huffman. The Congressman is heading up the Project 2025 Task Force on Capitol Hill.

I asked:

Joyce: Project 2025 reads like a political party’s convention platform. Led by Trump, the Republican Party didn’t have a platform in 2020, instead just expressing support for his agenda. How do we know that Project 2025 is connected to Trump and not just the work of a conservative think tank?

He responded:

Congressman Huffman:   Both Heritage and the Trump campaign want people to suspend disbelief and think their respective efforts are disconnected. To protect Heritage’s nonprofit (c)(3) status, they pretend Heritage is just an independent, non-profit, conservative “think tank” putting out some ideas. And separately, without any coordination, the Trump campaign is developing action plans for Trump to implement if he wins.  Good luck with that!  These efforts are one and the same. Heritage boasts of working with over 100 extreme rightwing groups that are the heart of Trump’s political base. And the authors and collaborators on Project 2025 include some of the most trusted MAGA members of the prior Trump administration – including former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Senior Advisors Stephen Miller and Peter Navarro, and many more. I don’t know if the GOP will formally adopt a “platform” at their convention this year, but if they do, it will likely be something like “Agenda 47,” the compilation of rambling Trump speeches laying out ideas and positions on the campaign website. It’s not nearly as detailed as Project 2025, and in some cases it’s weird and not serious enough to be in Project 2025 (e.g., flying cars), but there are no conflicts between the two.  For all intents and purposes, the GOP platform is Project 2025, which Steve Bannon and other Trump confidants openly proclaim as their “war plan.”   

Friday on Morning Joe, we discussed Project 2025 as the context for understanding Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ comment that the coming revolution could be “bloodless if the left allows it to be.” The folks at Heritage are putting in an awful lot of time and expense if this is a program that Trump isn’t on board with.

Project 2025 doesn’t contain overt references to Trump. In that regard, it reminds me of the Supreme Court’s opinion in the immunity appeal, Trump v. U.S. The Court pretended it was writing rules for theoretical future presidents. They tried to divorce their decision from the reality that it could let Donald Trump, whom they dismissed without naming him as “present exigencies,” escape from his effort to overturn the election with no consequences. But we knew—just like we know here.

It’s not like it’s the first time Donald Trump has lied to the American people.

Thanks for being here with me at Civil Discourse, where we apparently are able to anticipate Trump’s before he makes them. I appreciated hearing from so many of you who saw Trump’s post and wrote to say you knew it wasn’t so because you’d read Congressman Huffman’s responses to Five Questions. The more people understand about Project 2025, the more they realize Trump can’t be permitted back in the White House. Trump knows it too. That’s why he’s suddenly denying any connection to it.

We’re in this together,

Joyce