Beware: Trump is Project 2025 — and he cannot escape it
After the Heritage Foundation unveiled Project 2025 in April last year when Trump was seeking the Republican nomination, he had no problem with it.
But now that the nation is turning its attention to the general election, Trump doesn’t want Project 2025’s extremism to turn off independents and moderates.
So Trump claimed Friday on his Truth Social platform that he has “no idea who is behind” Project 2025.
This is another in a long line of Trump lies.
The Project 2025 playbook was written by more than 20 officials who Trump himself appointed during his first term. If he has “no idea” who they are, he’s showing an alarming cognitive decline.
One of the leaders of Project 2025 is Russ Vought. Vought was Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, a key position in the White House. Vought is also drafting Trump’s 2024 GOP platform.
Another Project 2025 leader is John McEntee, another of Trump’s top White House aides. (McEntee recently went viral with a video in which he claimed he gives counterfeit money to homeless people to get them arrested.)
Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, and both of its associate directors, Spencer Chretien and Troup Hemenway, were in charge of personnel in Trump’s White House.
Even the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign appears in the Project 2025 recruitment video.
Trump says he “knows nothing” about Project 2025. And he says he “disagrees” with it.
As the former chairman of the Republican Party, Michael Steele put it, “Ok, let’s all play with Stupid for minute … so exactly how do you ‘disagree’ with something you ‘know nothing about’ or ‘have no idea’ who is behind, saying or doing the thing you disagree with?”
The close relationship between Trump and the Heritage Foundation goes back years. In 2018, the Heritage Foundation bragged that Trump implemented two-thirds of their policy recommendations in his first year — more than any other president had done for them.
The goals of Project 2025 are the same goals Trump tried to achieve in his first term or has been advocating in this campaign.
Trump has said he’d seek vengeance against those who have prosecuted him for his illegal acts. Project 2025 calls for the prosecution of district attorneys Trump doesn’t like and the takeover of law enforcement in blue cities and states.
Trump may want to distance himself from Project 2025 in order to come off less bonkers to independents and moderates, but he can’t escape it. The document embodies everything he stands for.
In his new book "The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism", political observer Joe Conason accuses former President Donald Trump of defrauding his MAGA supporters by raising hundreds of millions of dollars under the guise of an "election defense fund" after the 2020 presidential election.
Conason explained that his book "tells a story of how conservatives got to the point where they are milking their own constituents for every penny they can squeeze out of them on false pretenses in almost every case." He described Trump's post-election fundraising as the "epitome" of this problem on the right.
In the weeks after the 2020 election, Trump "booked a quarter of a billion dollars" by telling his supporters he was setting up an "official election defense fund." However, the money did not actually go towards challenging the election results. Instead, it ended up in a super PAC controlled by Trump, which he could use for his own personal legal defense and other expenses.
This accusation fits into a broader pattern that Conason sees within the conservative movement. He argues that many Republican leaders and figures have been exploiting their supporters through dishonest and fraudulent means.
Conason's book aims to expose this "grifting" and "scamming" that he believes has become rampant on the right. The context here is important. "The Longest Con" comes at a time when Trump is facing a growing number of legal challenges, including criminal indictments in New York, Florida, and Washington, D.C.
Trump's post-election fundraising tactics seem designed to further undermine the former president's credibility among his core supporters.
Additionally, Conason's accusations reflect a longstanding criticism of Trump's business practices and his tendency to take advantage of his followers.
Throughout his career, Trump has been accused of running various scams, such as the failed Trump University, and repeatedly stiffing contractors and vendors who have done work for him.
