Trump Disingenuously Tries to Distance Himself from Project 2025

If one wants to get an idea of what a Trump 2.0 regime would look like, look no farther than Project 2025, a 900+ page agenda that would radically attack career civil servants and replace them with Trump loyalists, make white "Christian" nationalism the de facto state religion, and drastically roll back the civil rights of gays and racial and religious minorities.  The ever more extreme Heritage foundation is behind the project working with some of worse extremists from Trump's first regime and groups of hate merchants across the far right religious and social spectrum.  I have downloaded a copy and it is both arduous and frightening reading. For the LGBT community, it's a safe bet that same sex marriage would be rescinded and it is not outside the realm of possibility that the sodomy laws could be revived and "don't say gay" laws and abortion bans would be nationwide.  Some of the authors are so extreme that I don't doubt that they'd love to bring back the Jim Crow laws while they are at it. The media has been far too slow in publicizing what's in Project 2025 which could push anyone who isn't a white supremacist or Christofascist away from the GOP overall.  With coverage of this extreme agenda for a second Trump regime beginning to belatedly get coverage, Trump seems to be sensing how unpopular Project 2025 may become and is disingenuously, trying to distance himself from it.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Trump's deceptive dance:

Former president Donald Trump sought Friday to distance himself from a conservative think tank’s plan for the next Republican presidency, as Democrats work to make it a political vulnerability for Trump in the November election.

The plan from the Heritage Foundation, known as Project 2025, pitches a sweeping overhaul of the federal government should Trump win a second term, including far more power for the executive branch. Many people involved in the effort are former Trump administration officials, and Trump publicly allied himself with the think tank as president.

Despite that, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he knows “nothing about Project 2025.”

“I have no idea who is behind it,” he wrote Friday. . . . Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

The Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, generated controversy three days ago for claiming in a media appearance that the country was in the middle of a “second American revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”

“Project 2025 is the extreme policy and personnel playbook for Trump’s second term that should scare the hell out of the American people,” Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement on Trump’s effort to distance himself from the plan. “Project 2025 staff and leadership routinely tout their connections to Trump’s team, and are the same people leading the [Republican National Committee] policy platform and Trump’s debate prep, campaign, and inner circle.” . . . . the project represents more than 110 conservative groups planning for the next GOP president. “But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.”

Trump’s campaign last year sought to downplay Project 2025 as “policy recommendations from external allies.” But Biden’s campaign and other Democrats have made an aggressive effort to make Trump answer for the plan.

Last month, House Democrats launched a task force to counter Project 2025. And on Friday, hours after Trump’s post about Project 2025, multiple speakers at a Biden rally in Wisconsin rallied supporters against the plan.

“When you go home, Google ‘Project 2025’ and tell everybody you know to do the same,” Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) said.

A centerpiece of the plan is a massive shake-up of the federal workforce to make it more loyal to the president, a proposal that aligns with Trump’s longtime complaints about a “deep state” bureaucracy that he accused of undermining his first-term agenda. Project 2025 touches on other politically sensitive issues, including calling for the Food and Drug Administration to “revisit and withdraw its initial approval” of the abortion pill mifepristone.

People involved in Project 2025 include Ben Carson, Trump’s former housing secretary; Peter Navarro, White House trade adviser under Trump; and Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump. Earlier this year, Trump and the Republican National Committee named Vought as policy director for the RNC committee crafting the party platform ahead of its national convention this month in Milwaukee.

Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is a senior partner in one of the groups advising Project 2025, the Conservative Partnership Institute. And John McEntee, director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump, serves as a senior adviser to Project 2025.

Biden’s campaign also pointed out that a Trump campaign spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, appeared in a September 2023 video promoting Project 2025′s training program for potential future political appointees. The video features several former Trump administration staffers identifying themselves, with Leavitt noting she was Trump’s assistant press secretary.

Biden’s campaign criticized the Heritage Foundation president’s comments about a “second American Revolution,” made just two days before the July Fourth holiday.

“248 years ago tomorrow America declared independence from a tyrannical king, and now Donald Trump and his allies want to make him one at our expense,” Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer said in a statement on Wednesday.

Trump and this group of zealots must be stopped by whatever means necessary.