Democratic officials recently settled on a specific goal: They would inform the public about Project 2025, a right-wing policy agenda being crafted by the Heritage Foundation with the assistance of several prominent Donald Trump associates. It posed a messaging challenge — many Americans don’t know what the Heritage Foundation is and are wholly unfamiliar with its lengthy governing blueprint — but Democrats decided to try anyway.
Last week, Trump unexpectedly gave them a hand: The former president published an odd item to his social media platform claiming to “know nothing” about Project 2025. The Republican went on to claim he has “no idea who is behind it,” he disagrees with some of its provisions, and he has “nothing to do with” the initiative.
As a strategic matter, this was incredibly unwise. For one thing, the GOP candidate’s statement let Democrats know that their efforts were having an effect. For another, Trump’s statement prompted a round of fact-checking, which left little doubt that his claims were absurd.
But just as notably, Trump helped bring attention to the Project 2025 plan, which is what Democrats were hoping for.
Shortly after midnight, he did it again. The former president published an online follow-up statement that read in part:
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it. The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part.”
For now, let’s not dwell on the fact that the Republicans’ 2024 platform has not, in reality, been “very well received.” Instead, there are two other angles of interest here.
The first is that Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Project 2025 are difficult to take seriously. “I literally don’t have enough time to list every connection between Donald Trump and Project 2025,” MSNBC’s Ali Velshi told viewers over the weekend. “But I can absolutely confidently say that Donald Trump’s claim that he ‘knows nothing about Project 2025’ and has ‘no idea who is behind it’ is, how do we say it in Canada? Complete and utter B.S.”
A CNN report published overnight went into striking detail:
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.
What’s more, NBC News tracked down a 2022 speech in which Trump spoke at a Heritage Foundation event and said, “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do … when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.” Remember, reports like these were instigated by a Trump missive that he didn’t need to publish. All of which brings us to the overarching point: The Republican made a tactical mistake by bringing national attention to Project 2025, elevating an issue that Democrats wanted people to know more about. Six days later, in his infinite wisdom, Trump unnecessarily did it again. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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