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Donald Trump wants to distance himself from Project 2025, the blueprint for his administration drawn up by his former officials and backed by an influential Republican-aligned think tank.
Project 2025’s 900-page manifesto for nearly every detail of a second Trump presidency was drawn up by more than a dozen former Trump administration officials and advisers, who have planned to “integrate” the document into the campaign’s platform in the coming months.
But on Friday, as his Democratic rivals use Project 2025 as shorthand for his agenda, Trump claimed that the proposal is news to him.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” he said on his Truth Social.
“I have no idea who is behind it,” he added. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Meanwhile, the chief political action committee supporting Trump has been running online ads promoting Project 2025, explicitly calling it “Trump’s Project 2025.”
Make America Great Again Inc. also bought the website trumpproject2025.com.
At the center of a Heritage Foundation-backed Project 2025 plan is the book Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise — essentially a wishlist for a second Trump administration, written by former White House aides and Trump-era officials, and designed around plans to replace civil servants with ideologically aligned appointees and undercut checks and balances to concentrate executive authority over federal agencies.
The plan recommends abolishing the Department of Education, slashing funds for federal law enforcement agencies, subverting agencies that regulate the airwaves and campaign financing to choke out dissent.
That consolidation of power would also insulate him against legal threats and usher in a wave of attacks against immigrants, reproductive healthcare and civil rights protections for LGBT+ people.
Trump’s disavowal of the plan also comes just days after the Heritage Foundation’s president hailed a Supreme Court decision that grants Trump some immunity from criminal prosecution as part of a “second American revolution” that he says may or may not be “bloodless.”
Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee are also going full court press against the plan in advertising and in campaign messaging.
Democratic members of Congress also have launched a Stop Project 2025 Task Force to coordinate with pro-democratic groups and civil rights advocates to combat elements of the plan, should Trump be elected.
A spokesperson for Project 2025 said the group “does not speak for any candidate or campaign.”
“We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy [and] personnel recommendations for the next conservative president,” the spokesperson added. “But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.”
The Democratic National Committee, which has been raising alarms about the plan for months, torched Trump’s statement.
“Donald Trump and Project 2025 are one big MAGA operation,” according to spokesperson Aida Ross. “Trump can’t hide his ties to the dangerous, unhinged MAGA loyalists at Project 2025, and the American people will stop them at the ballot box in November.”
