Former President Donald Trump has issued a scathing rebuke of the Heritage Foundation’s so-called “Project 2025” proposal, claiming parts of the plan are “ridiculous” and “abysmal.”
On Truth Social, the former president said he knew nothing of the organization’s initiative that recommends how a future Republican president could govern conservatively.
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump said.
“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,” he added.
The Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a future Republican president aims to reconfigure many aspects of the U.S. government. The plan, known as the Presidential Transition Project, was launched in April 2023 and is unassociated with the former president, per Fox News.
“As we’ve been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign,” a spokesperson for Project 2025 told Fox News.
“We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president,” the spokesperson added.
“But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement,” the spokesperson continued.
Fox News noted that the former president’s decision to isolate himself from Project 2025 comes a day after Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts was heavily criticized by Democrats over his comments about a “second American revolution” during a radio interview with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
“[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said. He added that the “radical left” is “apoplectic” because “our side is winning.”
Project 2025 includes plans to overhaul the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as well as ways to tackle issues like abortion and immigration.
Fox News reported that some of the chapters in the proposal were orchestrated with the help of former officials in the Trump administration.
For example, the chapter regarding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was written by a team led by former assistant acting DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli.
Cuccinelli argued that the DHS has become “bloated, bureaucratic, expensive and [has] lost sight of its mission priorities.”
The conservative initiative has been used by President Joe Biden’s campaign and other Democrats as a strategy to target Trump in his bid for the White House.
Biden’s campaign described the proposal as “the plan by Donald Trump’s MAGA Republican allies to give Trump more power over your daily life, gut democratic checks and balances, and consolidate power in the Oval Office if he wins.”
“Trump’s campaign advisors and close allies wrote it — and are doing everything they can to elect him so he can execute their playbook immediately,” the campaign added.
The campaign also acclaimed that Project 2025 “Terminates the Constitution” and “Takes Away Reproductive Freedom Nationwide.”
