As recently as this past weekend, Donald Trump continued to say that he knows nothing about Project 2025. He said it in an interview with Lex Fridman posted September 3:
Fridman: Let me ask you about Project 2025. You publicly said you didn’t have any direct connection with
Trump [interrupting]: Nothing. I know nothing about it. And they know that too, Democrats know that. And I purposefully haven’t read it, because I want to say to you I have no idea what it’s all about. It’s easier than saying I read it, and you know all of those things. So I purposefully haven’t read it and I’ve heard about it. I’ve heard about things that are in there I don’t like and there’s some things in there that everybody would like, but there are things that I don’t like at all. And I think it’s unfortunate that they put it out, but it doesn’t mean anything because it has nothing to do with me. Project 2025 has absolutely nothing to do with me.
Trump interview starting with Project 2025 discussion
The Heritage Foundation sponsors of Project 2025 have a very different perspective.
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is being organized by The Heritage Foundation and builds off Heritage’s longstanding “Mandate for Leadership,” which has been highly influential for presidential administrations since the Reagan era. Most recently, the Trump administration relied heavily on Heritage’s “Mandate” for policy guidance, embracing nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office.
Paul Dans, former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) during the Trump administration, serves as the director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project.1
They go on to say, “One year after taking office, President Donald Trump and his administration have embraced nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations from The Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership.”2 They claim that Donald Trump implemented 334 of their recommendations as president.3
The purpose of Project 2025 is to fundamentally alter the federal government, and change expert career civil servants and their legislated rulemaking process into political decisions made by carefully vetted individuals trained by Project 2025 and totally loyal to the president. So yes, the guardrails will come off.
Kamala Harris can trivially derail Project 2025 by just not appointing those right-wing political operatives into key government jobs. It’s the same way she can make impotent the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision by simply obeying the law.
