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A leader of Project 2025 told undercover reporters that Donald Trump is “very supportive” of their work despite the former president publically distancing himself from the conservative policy agenda.
An undercover journalist and a paid actor from the Centre for Climate Reporting pretended to be relatives of a wealthy donor when they set up a meeting with Russell Vought at a five-star hotel in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, last month.
Vought headed the Office of Management and Budget during the second half of Trump’s first term and has been tipped as a possible chief of staff in a second Trump administration.
Project 2025 consists of roughly 900 pages of reports that the Heritage Foundation think tank aims to have turned into policy in a future Republican administration. Think tanks in Washington often write up policy ideas hoping that they may become legislation.
It includes proposals for shutting down the Department of Education and federal limits on abortion. Democrats have used the plans to attack the Trump campaign and convince voters that his agenda is more conservative than they may think.
Trump has claimed to know nothing about the project and has attempted to distance himself from it, but Vought told the undercover people it is different behind the scenes.
“He’s been at our organization, he’s raised money for our organization, he’s blessed it,” Vought told the reporter during the undercover discussion. “I remember walking into our last day in office and told him what I was going to do. So, he’s very supportive of what we do.”
“There are people like me that have his trust that will be able to get it to him in whatever position we’re at,” Vought said. “The relationships will be there. The trust level will be there.”
“He’s running against the brand. He is not running against any people – he is not running against any institutions,” he added. “It’s interesting, he’s in fact not even opposing himself to a particular policy.”
Vought described his own think tank, the Center for Renewing America, as “the Death Star.” The center has been running Project 2025 alongside the Heritage Foundation.
He added he’s in charge of the drafting of hundreds of executive orders, regulations and memos to push the project’s right-wing agenda.
Part of the plans is the “largest deportation in history,” which Trump has also promised to push through. It also includes a suggestion to use the military against Americans to suppress possible large protests in an effort to put an end to multiculturalism.
“George Floyd obviously was not about race. It was about destabilizing the Trump administration,” Vought said.
But many of these documents will not see the light of day, according to Vought and one of his aides, who was also secretly recorded by the reporter. The documents are set to be shared with transition team members to avoid having them be requested by reporters via the Freedom of Information Act, which enables the public to request documents and information from the government.
Micah Meadowcroft, the think tank’s research director, told the reporters, “I have colleagues who officially work for [the think tank], but like 35 out of their 40-hour work week is Project 2025 stuff.”
“It’s a big, fat stack of papers that will be distributed during the transition period, but not as part of the transition. Because obviously, you want as little of it to be FOIA-able … as possible,” he added.
“The goal is to familiarize all the transition team people with these plans. But you don’t actually send them to their work emails,” Meadowcroft said, adding “I’d say probably a quarter to a third of staff, myself included, if there is a second Trump administration, would go in.”
Vought noted that it would be difficult to ban abortion without severe electoral consequences. But he added he would want to block funding for Planned Parenthood and fetal tissue research.
An important part of Project 2025 is handing more power to the president and restricting the independence of agencies, including the Department of Justice.
“Eighty percent of my time is working on the plans of what’s necessary to take control of these bureaucracies,” Vought told the reporter.
They then asked Vought what role he would want in a second Trump term.
“I want to be the person that crushes the deep state. I think there’s a lot of different ways to do that,” he said.
The Independent has contacted the Center for Renewing America and the Heritage Foundation for comment.
