'PR gesture': Why Project 2025’s 'brain trust isn’t sweating' Trump’s 'disavowals'

16 July 2024

Although 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation's 900-page blueprint for a second Trump Administration — many of Trump's critics have been pointing out that a long list of his MAGA allies were heavily involved in crafting the controversial document.

According to NBC News reporter Allan Smith, the "brain trust behind Project 2025 isn't sweating" Trump's "disavowals."

"At recent events in Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee," Smith reports, "Project 2025 proponents and allies sought to defuse tensions and go on offense against the press and Democrats, after Trump took the wind out of their sails with critical social media posts as Democrats oriented their campaign around the plans."

The events that Smith is referring to are the recent National Conservatism Conference and the 2024 Republican National Convention, which got underway in Milwaukee on Monday, July 15 — only two days after Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Western Pennsylvania.

During Heritage's Policy Fest at the convention, Heritage CEO Kevin Roberts told NBC News, "The lesson of the last few days and the motivation for something like Project 2025 is to make Washington a heck of a lot less important in our lives."

Smith notes that during the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., "more than a dozen" Project 2025 organizers and contributors "made their case for drastically reconstituting the civil service, retaliating against Democrats for the ongoing prosecutions of Trump, launching mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and countering 'anti-white' discrimination."

According to a member of the Project 2025 advisory board, Heritage and its allies aren't worried about Trump's criticism of the plan.

That source, presumably interviewed on condition of anonymity, told NBC News, "The general sense is this is a PR gesture for him to provide himself maximum room to maneuver and avoid making any commitments at this point. He wants to avoid having to answer questions about anything he doesn't want to answer questions about. Most people I know who are involved with it don't seem overly worried that this actually constitutes a repudiation and is going to mean anything on January 20."

Read NBC News' full report at this link.

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