Miami.- Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, a massive overhaul of the federal government drawn up by former allies and ex-administration officials, days after the head of the think tank behind the program suggested there would be a second American Revolution.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on social media. “I have no idea who is behind it. I don’t agree with some of the things they say and some of the things they say are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Whatever they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
The 922-page plan outlines a dramatic expansion of presidential power and a plan to fire as many as 50,000 government workers to replace them with Trump loyalists. President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has worked to draw more attention to the program, especially as Biden tries to keep fellow Democrats on board after their disastrous debate.
“He’s trying to hide his connections to the extreme Project 2025 agenda from his allies,” Biden said of Trump in a statement released by his campaign on Saturday. “The only problem? It was written for him, by those closest to him. Project 2025 should scare every American.”
Trump has outlined his own plans to remake the government if he wins a second term, including staging the largest deportation operation in U.S. history and imposing tariffs on potentially all imports. His campaign has previously warned outside allies not to presume to speak on the former president’s behalf and has suggested his on-hold transition efforts were unhelpful.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast that Republicans are “in the process of taking back this country.” Former U.S. Rep. Dave Brat of Virginia hosted Bannon’s show, while he is serving a four-month prison sentence.
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it,” Roberts said.
Those comments were widely circulated online and attacked by the Biden campaign, which accused Trump and his allies of “dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.”
Some of the people involved in Project 2025 are former senior administration officials. The project director is Paul Dans, who served as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under Trump. Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt appeared in one of Project 2025’s videos.
John McEntee, a former director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel in the Trump administration, is a senior adviser. McEntee told the conservative news site The Daily Wire earlier this year that the Project 2025 team would integrate much of its work with the campaign after the summer, when Trump announced his transition team.
Trump’s comments on Project 2025 come ahead of meetings the Republican Party is scheduled to hold next week to begin drafting its party platform.
Project 2025 has been preparing its own 180-day agenda for the next administration that it plans to share privately, rather than as part of its public playbook of priorities for a Republican president. A key Trump ally, Russ Vought, who contributed to Project 2025 and is drafting this latest pillar, also sits on the Republican National Committee’s platform-writing committee.
Project 2025 said in a statement that it is not affiliated with any particular candidate or campaign.
“We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating for policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president,” he said. “But ultimately it is up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.”
A Biden campaign spokesman said Project 2025 staff members are also running the Republican policy platform. “Project 2025 is the extreme policy and staff playbook for Trump’s second term that should scare the American people,” Ammar Moussa said.
On Thursday, as the country celebrated Independence Day and Biden prepared for his television interview after his shaky debate performance, the president’s campaign posted on X an image from the dystopian television series “The Handmaid’s Tale” that shows a group of women in the show’s red dresses and white hats standing in formation beside a reflecting pool with a cross at the end where the Washington Monument should be. The story revolves around women who are stripped of their identities and forced to bear children for other couples under a totalitarian regime.
“July 4th under Trump’s Project 2025,” the post read.
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