Former Republican officials are deriding “absurd” efforts by Donald Trump to disavow Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint for a radical takeover of the US government if he is re-elected in November.
Project 2025 plans include replacing the civil service with Trump supporters, abolishing the Department of Education, placing the Department of Justice under presidential control and banning abortion pills.
Democrats have been united in trying to make the case that the 900-plus page document released by the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, is emblematic of Trump’s second term.
But Trump tried to veto the bill last week, even though the bill was written by former members of his administration and Trump has frequently repeated the policy in his speeches.
The Republican front-runner claimed on his website Truth Social that he “knows nothing about Project 2025” and had “no idea who is behind it.”
He added: “I don’t agree with some of the things they say and some of the things they say are just completely ridiculous and awful. I wish them the best of luck with whatever they do but I have nothing to do with them.”
Olivia Troy, a former White House adviser to Mike Pence who attended policy meetings during Trump’s first presidency, said Trump sought to distance himself from Project 2025 because he recognized that its highly controversial policy proposals could hurt his campaign.
“If you look at the collaborators and creators of this plan, this is outrageous,” she said. He told CNN Asked whether Trump’s denial was credible, he replied: “Many of these people served in the Cabinet during the Trump administration. Some of them worked with me. I attended policy meetings with them.”
Troye named a variety of people as lead architects for the project, including President Trump’s White House personnel director John McEntee, Stephen Miller, a senior adviser in his first administration, Cabinet members Ben Carson, who was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Ken Cuccinelli, a former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security.
She noted that Carson has been “on the campaign trail” with Trump.
“I think what this tells us is that Donald Trump knows that what’s in this plan is so extreme that it would harm his chances of getting elected, and that’s what he’s concerned about.”
“How can you say you’re against something when you don’t know anything or have no idea who is saying or doing what they’re saying or doing?” former Republican National Committee chairman and MSNBC host Michael Steele said, echoing Troy’s mockery.
“And how do you not know that Project 2025 director Paul Dans served as chief of staff in the Office of Personnel Management and his deputy director Spencer Chretien served as special assistant and deputy director in the President’s Office of Personnel Management?”
Among the plan’s more radical proposals are firing thousands of full-time civil servants and replacing them with pro-Trump conservatives, dismantling the federal Department of Education, asserting presidential power over the nominally independent Department of Justice, and banning abortion pills.
Democrats, currently in the midst of a fierce intraparty battle over whether to retain Joe Biden as their presidential nominee, have decided to make “Project 2025” a household word to illustrate what President Trump’s reelection would mean.
Troy said the project should be seen as a threat not just to Democrats but also to moderate conservatives.
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“A careful reading of this plan shows that it is a complete infringement of individual liberty by the federal government,” she said.
“[It talks] About law enforcement and how they use federal law enforcement in local states and local cities…without oversight. Because they’re doing it without oversight. They learned all their lessons during the first term of the Trump administration, and that’s what’s frightening here. I think we need to pay attention to this. We shouldn’t trust Donald Trump no matter how far he goes…I [on] I want to be in policy-making meetings with these people.”
Trump’s supporters have sought to support his efforts to distance himself from the project, with Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is considered a potential vice presidential candidate for Trump, insisting in an interview with CNN on Sunday that there is no connection between Project 2025 and Trump.
“Think tanks do think tank work. They come up with ideas and they say things,” he said, “but our party’s presidential candidate is Donald Trump.”
He also downplayed the significance of comments made by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who last week on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, that a conservative-led “Second American Revolution” would be bloodless “if the left lets it,” something many Democrats see as an implicit threat of political violence.
“He’s not running for president,” Rubio said. “Our candidate is Donald Trump. I’ve never seen Donald Trump say something like that.”
A detailed investigation of the officials involved in the document’s creation appears to overturn those denials.
Of the 38 people involved in writing and editing Project 2025, 31 were appointed to positions in the Trump administration or transition team, meaning 81% of the document’s authors held formal positions during Trump’s term in office.
