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Former President Donald Trump has once again denied any knowledge or involvement with the controversial far-right Project 2025 initiative, which was developed by the Heritage Foundation. In a post on his Truth Social account on Thursday, the 45th president issued a vehement denial of both Project 2025 and the individuals behind it.
This marks the second time he has publicly distanced himself from the authoritarian strategic document promoted by Heritage and over 100 of his former administration’s advisors and staffers. “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well-received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it,” Trump wrote.
“The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part. By now, after all of these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERYTHING!”
However, the Lincoln Project, a prominent anti-Trump Republican group, countered his post with a video clip showing Trump speaking to the Heritage Foundation in 2022. In the clip, the former president appeared to acknowledge Heritage’s policy work, calling them a “great group” that is “going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”
At the heart of Project 2025 is a 920-page playbook entitled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” This document includes contributions from six of Trump’s former cabinet secretaries and outlines extreme policies such as cutting veteran and active-duty military benefits, permanently banning abortions and fertility treatments, removing LGBTQ+ individuals from the list of federally protected classes, converting public education into a for-profit system, and defunding the FBI and the Department of Justice.
Trump’s latest denial may be a response to the growing public interest in Project 2025. MSNBC host Ari Melber reported Wednesday that, according to Google Trends, more Americans are searching for Project 2025 than for pop icon Taylor Swift and the National Football League.
A viral photo has also surfaced, showing Trump at a Heritage Foundation meeting shaking hands with the group’s president, Kevin Roberts, one of the chief architects of Project 2025. This image directly contradicts Trump’s claim that he has “no idea who is in charge” of the initiative.
Earlier this month, Roberts proudly proclaimed in an interview with a far-right broadcaster that his side was in the midst of a “second American Revolution.” He added that this revolution would be “bloodless, if the left allows it to be,” suggesting that dissenters of a second Trump administration could be met with violence.
One of the primary authors of Project 2025 is Russ Vought, who leads the far-right group Center for Renewing America, one of Heritage’s main partners in the initiative. Vought, who served as director of the Trump White House’s Office of Management and Budget, wrote the section on “The Executive Office of the President of the United States” and is considered a leading contender for White House chief of staff if Trump wins in November.
