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Donald Trump called Project 2025, a 900-page blueprint for his second presidency, “seriously extreme” at his first rally since the assassination attempt against him.
Trump made the comments at a rally in Michigan on Saturday afternoon. The event comes one week after Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at his Butler, Pennsylvania rally last weekend. Crooks killed one attendee and injured two others while one of his shots grazed Trump’s ear.
“Like some on the right, severe right, came up with this Project 25, I don’t even know, some of them I know who they are, but they’re very, very conservative,” Trump said. “They’re sort of the opposite of the radical left.”
“You have the radical left and the radical right and they come up — I don’t know what the hell it is, it’s Project 25,” he continued. “‘He’s involved in project — and then they read some of the things and they are extreme, they’re seriously extreme.
“But I don’t know anything about it, I don’t want to know anything about it.”
Project 2025 is led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and more than a dozen former Trump administration officials.
The document includes plans to expand his executive authority, replace civil servants with loyalists, crush abortion rights, attack civil rights for LGBTQ+ people and impose an anti-immigrant agenda, among other policies.
The plan would give Trump unprecedented executive authority over the federal government, The Independent has previously reported.
While Trump claims to know nothing about the plan, he praised the Heritage Foundation and their “plans for exactly what our movement will do” two years ago.
“Heritage does such an incredible job, this is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America,” Trump said in 2022.
Trump also said he has a place in his administration for Tom Homan, a member of The Heritage Foundation and one of the Project 2025 authors.
He also claims the plan is “extreme,” but the document mirrors several policies the former president himself has endorsed.
For example, at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, Trump committed to mass deportation if elected.
“That’s why, to keep our family safe, the Republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country,” Trump said on Thursday night.
Meanwhile, Project 2025 endorses a similar plan.
“Prioritizing border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation, is critical if we are to regain control of the border, repair the historic damage done by the Biden Administration, return to a lawful and orderly immigration system, and protect the homeland from terrorism and public safety threats,” the Project 2025 document reads.
Trump has also repeatedly claimed that the human-driven climate crisis is a “hoax,” and several times has vowed to “drill, baby, drill.” In a similar vein, Project 2025 says the next Republican administration must “stop the war on oil and natural gas” and end efforts to “decarbonize the American economy.”
Several Democratic lawmakers have now formed a task force to combat Project 2025.
“Project 2025 is more than an idea, it’s a dystopian plot that’s already in motion to dismantle our democratic institutions, abolish checks and balances, chip away at church-state separation, and impose a far-right agenda that infringes on basic liberties and violates public will,” task force member Representative Jared Huffman said.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts called the task force “unserious.”
“Project 2025 will not be ‘stopped’ by an unserious, mistake-riddled press release or a task force of House Democrats lacking a basic understanding of federal governance,” Roberts said in a statement.
