Project 2025 has gotten a lot of headlines recently as the right-wing plan for making extreme changes to the U.S. government if Donald Trump gets elected president again in November. The plan covers everything from a ban on porn to a new nuclear arms race. But the latest critic of Project 2025 is perhaps the most surprising, because that would be Donald Trump himself.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on Truth Social Friday morning. “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.”
Trump didn’t elaborate on what he finds “ridiculous and abysmal” about Project 2025 and the Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to questions emailed midday on Friday. But Trump’s comments are sure to leave a lot of people scratching their heads within the Republican Party and beyond.
Project 2025 is being organized by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation and lays out its extremist vision for the future in a policy paper that spans over 900 pages. The effort would start by firing 50,000 federal government workers and replacing them with Trump loyalists to purge “the deep state,” as it’s come to be known. And it only gets more authoritarian from there, a fact that Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts made crystal clear earlier this week.
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on Tuesday.
Needless to say, Roberts is very bluntly threatening violence against anyone who attempts to stop any element of Project 2025′ authoritarian agenda. And that’s not an idle threat when you remember that Trump and his fellow insurrectionists attempted a coup at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
This appears to be the first time Trump has specifically mentioned Project 2025 in a public setting and it’s likely a sign of how unpopular the plan is that the former president is trying to distance himself from it. But Trump is also a habitual liar and does have some understanding of public relations.
Complicating matters, President Joe Biden’s dismal performance last week at the first presidential debate has sent the Democratic Party into full crisis mode. There are serious questions about whether Biden can sustain another four months on the campaign trail and he was already running neck-and-neck with Trump in the polls before his embarrassing verbal gaffes.
What lies ahead? That’s the big question obviously. The Democrats could very well replace Biden with Kamala Harris or another candidate but that’s only possible if the president decides to step aside. And Biden has given every indication that he intends to stay on. But whoever the candidate is come November, people who care about living in a free society need to make sure Trump can’t take power again. Because when a supposedly “mainstream” conservative leader like Roberts is threatening violence to enact his agenda, you have to take it seriously.
