Donald Trump's Project 2025 Post Met With Skepticism

Former President Donald Trump's recent social media post about Project 2025 was met with online skepticism on Friday.

Project 2025 is an initiative developed by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, to make significant changes to the backbone of the United States federal government. It is designed to be implemented if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.

Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday, "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them."

A Project 2025 spokesperson told Newsweek via email on Monday, "As we've been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign. We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president. But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement. Rather than obsessing over Project 2025, the Biden campaign should be addressing the 25th Amendment."

The 25th Amendment clarifies that the vice president would take over if the president were to die, resign or be removed from office.

However, President Joe Biden's campaign and liberal media pundits were not buying Trump's claim that he was in no way associated with Project 2025.

Biden-Harris HQ, the rapid response account on X, formerly Twitter, for Biden's reelection campaign, shared a clip of Trump giving the keynote speech at an annual Heritage Foundation event in October 2017, in which he says, "Your organization is named the Heritage Foundation because you understand that our glorious heritage is the foundation of everything we hope to achieve...which is why we need the help of the Heritage Foundation and everyone here tonight to get our tax cuts through the House, through the Senate..."

Newsweek reached out to the Heritage Foundation via online form for comment.

MSNBC host Chris Hayes wrote on X, "The Trump SuperPAC has run ads about Project 2025, and a ton of Trumpworld people are authors of it. They are scared now because they are desperate for no one to know what they're actually up to."

Ammar Moussa, director of rapid response for the Biden campaign, posted photos of ads about Project 2025 run by Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC that supports Trump, according to Google's Ads Transparency Center.

However, the ads make no mention of Project 2025, but rather lead people searching Google for Project 2025 to Trump's proposed policies.

Reese Gorman, a politics reporter for the nonpartisan political news outlet NOTUS, wrote on X on Friday: "When rumors started ahead of the first presidential debate that Biden and his campaign planned to go after Trump on Project 2025, the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. bought a domain titled 'trumpproject2025' as a way to capture the search traffic generated from the attacks. The website makes no reference to Heritage's Project 2025 and instead lays out Trump's plans for a second term, including much of his official Agenda 47."

Agenda 47 is a package of policies that would be implemented if Trump returns to the White House, which has been pushed out by the Trump campaign.

Trump's spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek via email on Friday: "Crooked Joe Biden, his campaign, and Democrats have been engaging in 'cheap fakes' to misrepresent President Trump's agenda. Their Trump Derangement Syndrome continues unabated."

Meanwhile, Mehdi Hasan, the editor-in-chief and CEO of the media company Zeteo and a former MSNBC anchor, posted on X: "What's revealing about Donald Trump loudly disavowing Project 2025 and falsely denying any knowledge of it is that clearly he knows how damaging it can be to his election bid. So why on earth did neither Biden nor the CNN moderators bring it up at the debate last week?"

Max Burns, a Democratic strategist and founder of progressive communications firm Third Degree Strategies, wrote that Trump's Project 2025 remarks are "a great sign that Democrats should be doubling down on highlighting the extreme far-right plans contained in Project 2025. The GOP is obviously seeing some internal polling showing how unpopular it is. Now is the time to make sure every single American knows Project 2025." Newsweek could not confirm any such internal polling.

David Corn, D.C. bureau chief of progressive magazine Mother Jones and MSNBC analyst, accused Trump of "gaslighting" the American public, in other words spewing lies that make people question what they believe is true.

"This is BS. Christian nationalist Russell Vought, who is one of the Trump allies in charge of the GOP platform effort, is a coordinator of Project 2025. Trump is gaslighting once again," Corn posted on X.

Jennifer Bendery, senior politics reporter at HuffPost, wrote: "All three of the guys behind Project 2025 worked in the White House for Trump when he was president."

Director of Project 2025 Paul Dans served as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under the Trump administration. Spencer Chretien, an associate director of Project 2025, previously served as Trump's special assistant and associate director of presidential personnel. The other associate director of Project 2025 is Troup Hemenway, former associate director of the Presidential Personnel Office under the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, one X user who typically posts pro-Trump content, said on X that Trump never endorsed or supported Project 2025, saying that the Heritage Foundation "has zero ties to Trump. These are the continuation of lies and fear-mongering from the left. Agenda 47 is the only platform that Trump has endorsed."

"Trump does not push Project 2025. He supports Agenda 47. Project 2025 was created by a conservative think tank called the Heritage Foundation. This is just another trick by the liberals to scare you into voting for the Democrats," another Trump supporter wrote on X.

Update 7/6/24, 9:24 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.

Update 7/10/24, 11:45 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Project 2025.