Trump hopes you won’t notice 'close partnership' with Project 2025: former Labor Secretary

06 July 2024

In a post to his Truth Social platform on Friday, former President Donald Trump raised eyebrows and turned heads in denying any ties to the far-right Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 initiative.

"I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal," Trump wrote, without elaborating on what he disagreed with. "Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them."

But in a recent column for the Guardian, Robert Reich — who served as U.S. Secretary of Labor in former President Bill Clinton's administration — wrote that despite Trump's attempt to distance himself from it, Project 2025 "embodies everything he stands for." Reich noted that Trump's Make America Great Again PAC is running ads touting "Trump's Project 2025," and that the PAC "also created the website TrumpProject2025.com."

"In case there’s any doubt that Trump and the Heritage Foundation are working in close partnership, Trump can be seen in this video praising the Heritage Foundation and saying he 'needs' them to 'achieve' his goals," Reich wrote. "The close relationship between Trump and the Heritage Foundation goes back years. In 2018, the Heritage Foundation bragged that Trump implemented two-thirds of their policy recommendations in his first year – more than any other president had done for them."

According to Reich, Trump's attempt to downplay his knowledge of and ties to Project 2025 and its key figures could be due to its extreme policy proposals. The 920-page playbook, "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise," is publicly available to view online, and lays out in detail the plan to consolidate executive power and wield it to systematically accomplish far-right political objectives. At its core is an executive order dubbed Schedule F — which Trump signed in the final months of his presidency and President Joe Biden abruptly rescinded shortly after taking office — that would undo numerous employment protections for the federal service.

Under Schedule F, the number of presidential appointees to serve in the federal government would drastically increase from approximately 5,000 to more than 54,000, and those appointees would then be scattered throughout all federal agencies to be strategically placed in key decision-making roles. Heritage is already hard at work pre-vetting potential Trump administration appointees — not based on their knowledge of crafting federal policy, but to gauge their loyalty to Trump and the MAGA agenda.

Once the federal government has been staffed with political loyalists, Project 2025 would then kick into high gear. This includes enacting policies like rolling back FDA approval of the abortion pill Mifepristone, and rounding up, detaining and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants in massive, sprawling detention camps built explicitly for that purpose. Heritage Foundation figures have even spoken favorably about "ending recreational sex and senseless use of birth control pills."

As Reich wrote, Project 2025 is staffed and led by Trump's former White House employees and advisors. Russ Vought, of the Center for Renewing America, leads one of Project 2025's partner organizations, served as the White House's Office of Management and Budget director under Trump. He's also rumored to be a frontrunner for White House chief of staff if Trump wins in November. Project 2025 senior advisor John McEntee was also the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office.

And should Trump win, one major plank of Project 2025 pertains directly to his stated plans for vengeance against his political enemies. The Mandate for Leadership playbook includes a section on how a president could deputize his Department of Justice to prosecute local district attorneys and state attorneys general, and the federal takeover of law enforcement agencies in Democratic-leaning cities and states.

"Project 2025 is, in short, the plan to implement what Donald Trump has said he wants to do if he’s re-elected," Reich wrote. "Trump may want to distance himself from Project 2025 in order to come off less bonkers to independents and moderates, but he can’t escape it."

Click here to read Reich's op-ed in full.

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