Trump Desperately Tries to Disavow Project 2025 in Late-Night Meltdown
Democrats tying Project 2025 to Donald Trump continues to get under his skin: Trump took to Truth Social late Wednesday night to try to distance himself from the radical agenda, posting after midnight, “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.”
“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! DJT,” he added.
This, it should come as no surprise, is probably not true. As The New Republic previously reported, Trump’s campaign, in coordination with the Republican National Committee, installed former Trump appointee Russ Vought as the RNC platform committee’s policy chair and Trump stooge Ed Martin as RNC deputy policy director. Both sit on the advisory board of Project 2025—and Vought even authored an entire chapter of the plan. A CNN analysis released Thursday found at least 140 people who worked in Trump’s administration involved in Project 2025—spanning across every level of his administration. According to CNN, six of Trump’s former cabinet secretaries collaborated on the 900-page master plan, with roughly 20 pages credited to Trump’s first deputy chief of staff.
Project 2025 is a pathway for executing Trump’s extreme policies The conservative think tank behind the project claims it’s crafted for any Republican president, but it’s not a matter of divine coincidence that Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee who, if he wins in November, will be inaugurated in 2025, the year for which the initiative is named. The thorn of Project 2025 dogging Trump seems to be its extreme position on executing a federal ban on abortion and IVF. It’s a position the extreme right holds, but which is at odds with a majority of the electorate.
Trump’s stated stance on contraceptives routinely shifts, but according to his recently adopted RNC platform, he wants to maintain access to contraception and IVF, while remaining murky on emergency contraceptives (Plan B) and the abortion pill, and opposing late-term abortions. Project 2025, meanwhile, seeks to dismantle access to IVF, emergency contraceptives, and the abortion pill nationwide.
During his presidency, Trump appointed several anti-abortion hardliners to his administration and the Supreme Court, which soon overturned Roe v. Wade. He allowed employers to opt-out of providing birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, expanded the “global gag rule,” and also sought to gut Planned Parenthood by banning the nonprofit from receiving federal funding.
Biden’s campaign has leaned into pairing Trump with Project 2025 as he attempts to distance himself from it. The DNC placed Project 2025 billboards around his rally in Doral, Florida, on Tuesday, and Biden has released multiple posts encouraging people to learn about the threat it poses, first directing people to Google the plan and then unveiling a website tying it to Trump. “Project 2025 will destroy America,” Biden warned in a video released by his campaign on Wednesday. “Look it up.”