Donald Trump has lately made clear he wants little to do with Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the next Republican president that has attracted considerable blowback in his race for the White House.
“I have no idea who is behind it,” the former president recently claimed on social media.
Many people Trump knows quite well are behind it.
Six of his former Cabinet secretaries helped write or collaborated on the 900-page playbook for a second Trump term published by the Heritage Foundation. Four individuals Trump nominated as ambassadors were also involved, along with several enforcers of his controversial immigration crackdown. And about 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff.
In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership,” the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch.
I don’t think that’s clear at all. He clearly doesn’t want anyone to think he’s directly responsible for it, and honestly that much is probably true (seriously, does anyone think he’s forward-thinking enough to come up with any of it?). But I don’t think he’s said at all that he wouldn’t go along with it if elected.