Lara Trump says Project 2025 has 'productive' ideas that would be 'great for this country'

21 August 2024

Even though former President Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the far-right Heritage Foundation's authoritarian Project 2025 playbook for the next Republican administration, his own daughter-in-law is now undercutting those efforts.

In a recent interview on The Blaze's Pat Gray Unleashed podcast, Lara Trump — who is also co-chair of the Republican National Committee – agreed with the host that Democrats' criticism of the 920-page policy blueprint was overblown. As progressive group Media Matters for America reported, Gray downplayed the attacks on Project 2025 as "some sort of kookery" and countered that the policy proposals he's seen in the document "are pretty reasonable."

"I mean, these are things that just make sense for the conservative party," Gray said. "Is that something that Donald feels it's necessary to distance himself from?"

"Well, I think you're right there are some ideas in there that are very productive and will be great for this country," Lara Trump said. "There are some ideas in there that might be a little more extreme, and the problem is Donald Trump hasn't had anything to do with Project 2025. This is a think tank."

The claim that her father-in-law "hasn't had anything to do with Project 2025" may be partially true in that the former president hasn't played a role in actively crafting the policies in the playbook. However, she's being misleading in her assertions of Trump's total ignorance of the extremist proposals listed in the document. As Russ Vought of the Center for Renewing America — a key partner of Project 2025 — said to two undercover journalists, Trump has given his full support to those behind the comprehensive policy outline.

"He's been at our organization, and he's raised money for our organization," Vought said. "He's blessed it... I told him what I was going to do... So, he's very supportive of what we do."

Additionally, the Heritage Foundation has previously boasted in its fundraising materials about its closeness with the former president's first administration. This includes the placement of numerous Heritage alumni in key decision-making roles in his White House, and implementing roughly two-thirds of its policy proposals in his first year as president.

As People magazine wrote in its in-depth deep dive into Project 2025, Heritage "lays out a far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that would corrode the separation of church and state, replace nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists and bolster the president's authority over independent agencies."

"While Project 2025 is not formally a part of Trump's campaign platform, it has been led and supported by several influential people in his orbit," People's Kyler Alvord wrote. "The project's top leaders all worked in Trump's White House and a number of the manifesto's contributors also served in the Trump administration, including but not limited to former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and imprisoned former trade adviser Peter Navarro."

Watch Lara Trump's segment below, or by clicking this link.

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