'Years in the making': Far-right group 'got permission from Trump' to quietly draft Day 1 plan

29 August 2024

Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have come to view Project 2025 as major liability for their campaign. Both of them have been trying to distance themselves from the Heritage Foundation's controversial blueprint for a second Trump Administration — repeatedly claiming that they have nothing to do with the proposals in the 920-page document.

Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, however, is reminding voters that Project 2025 was assembled by top Trump allies. And her website even has an entire section devoted to the Heritage document.

Project 2025 has been the focus of countless articles, but in a Politico report published on August 29, journalists Hailey Fuchs and Meridith McGraw emphasize that Heritage isn't the only right-wing think tank planning a second Trump administration. The America First Policy Institute (AFPI), according to Fuchs and McGraw, has a detailed Trump 2.0 blueprint that has been "years in the making."

"That planning has taken place largely outside the official Trump campaign, whose own transition planning is months behind the schedule of his first bid for the White House," Fuchs and McGraw explain. "But Trump and top aides are aware of the outside effort, and many Republicans view it as a key supplement to the formal Trump transition effort, as long as it stays out of the spotlight — and avoids angering Trump."

AFPI was founded in 2021, and CEO Brooke Rollins is a longtime Trump ally. Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway heads AFPI's Center for the American Child.

Conway told Politico, "For three and a half years, AFPI has focused on personnel and policy. It was formed by and is teeming with senior staffers from the first Trump Administration whose goal is to be ready on Day 1. Linda McMahon, Brooke Rollins and the team have planned with precision and executed with put-your-head-down type humility."

Fuchs and McGraw point out that AFPI's "connections and access to Trump and his allies run deep," including McMahon, who chairs the AFPI board.

Right-wing lobbyist Bryan Lanza told Politico, "They got permission from Trump. Linda's a former cabinet official, she’s now in the transition. I think that sort of shows that there's some connective tissue."

Fuchs and McGraw note AFPI's "dark money" support.

"The group is well-funded, though as a 501(c)(3) 'dark money' nonprofit, it does not disclose its donors," the Politico journalists report. "In 2022, it brought in $23.6 million in revenue, according to a recent tax filing, and paid a number of former Trump administration officials hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation. The Trump loyalists inside the group, sometimes dubbed the former president's 'White House in waiting,' include Rollins — Trump's former Domestic Policy Council director — and Larry Kudlow, his former National Economic Council director."

"Trump has hosted fundraisers for AFPI at his Mar-a-Lago club, his PAC Save America donated to the group, and his first major speech in Washington since leaving the White House was at an AFPI event," they added

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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