“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” Trump wrote. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Trump’s vague disavowal of Project 2025 came a few days after Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, made inflammatory statements about a coming “second American Revolution” that would be “bloodless” “if the left allows it to be.”
“As we’ve been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign,” the Project 2025 account said in a statement on X. “But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.”
Despite Trump’s claims to have “nothing to do with” Project 2025, his administration and campaign personnel contributed to the project, including Karoline Leavitt, his campaign’s national press secretary, as the Biden campaign quickly pointed out on X.
Former Trump administration officials wrote and edited massive chunks of the manifesto. One of its two primary editors, Paul Dans, who directs the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, served as the White House liaison for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration, among other positions.
These people are committing the Cardinal Sin of interacting with Donald Trump, though: telling him what to do. There’s a tiny chance that even if he is elected, he might fully ignore this list out of spite.
If you want Trump to do something, you need to convince him that it was his idea all along.