President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are defying critics calling for the president to step away from the 2024 presidential race by launching a full offensive aimed at tying former President Trump to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 platform.
The effort comes amid Trump's attempt to distance himself from Project 2025, a highly scrutinized initiative that's been portrayed as a blueprint for a future Republican administration to restructure many parts of the U.S. government. Trump has described elements of the plan as "ridiculous" and "abysmal."
It also comes as Biden faces increased calls from many in his own party to bow out of the race following a disappointing showing in the first presidential debate last month.
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"Donald Trump’s Project 2025 team is stacked with the same extremists who helped him rip away women’s freedoms, round up and deport Latinos, and undermine our democracy in his first term," Biden campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika told Fox News Digital.
"If Trump wins this election, his Project 2025 allies will work around the clock to make sure he can go even further to ban abortion nationwide, gut Social Security and Medicare, and rule as a ‘dictator on day one.’ Donald Trump and Project 2025 are one and the same — and voters are going to make sure they both lose this November."
Although it's not officially associated with Trump's campaign, Chitika's use of the term "Trump's Project 2025 team" is a reference to the individuals who created the initiative in 2023 largely having previously held roles within the former president's administration, including Paul Dans, who directed the project and served as Trump's White House Liaison to the Office of Personnel Management.
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Dans' associates constructing the initiative, Spencer Chretien and Troup Hemenway, served respectively as a special assistant to Trump and in the Presidential Personnel Office. In fact, 81% of individuals who worked on the initiative held formal roles within the Trump administration, and some current aides have also assisted with the project.
Biden and Harris' rhetoric on the campaign trail in recent weeks has sought to shift focus to the project, not just as a likely distraction from the pressure facing Biden, but also because they see it as a winning message to moderate swing state voters who could very well decide the election.
"Trump’s advisers have created a 900-page blueprint — called ‘Project 2025’ — detailing everything else they plan to do in a second term, including a plan to cut Social Security, repeal our $35 cap on insulin, eliminate the Department of Education and end programs like Head Start," Harris said at a campaign stop in Nevada on Tuesday.
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"Donald Trump wants to turn our democracy into a dictatorship, and the Supreme Court basically just declared he can get away with it," she later added, referencing the Supreme Court's ruling last week that a president has substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts committed while in office.
Trump disavowed Project 2025 in a post on Truth Social last week, saying he didn't know who was behind the initiative that offers recommendations on how a future Republican president can begin to enact conservative changes upon entering office, including overhauling the Justice Department and the FBI, as well as tackling issues like abortion and immigration.
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"I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it," Trump wrote. "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."
Trump's campaign took aim at the attempts to tie him to Project 2025 on Thursday, telling Fox News Digital, "Agenda 47 and President Trump’s RNC Platform are the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term.
"Team Biden and the DNC are LYING and fear-mongering because they have NOTHING else to offer the American people. Remember this is the same group that lied to Americans and hid Joe Biden’s cognitive decline all these years."
Fox News' Kyle Morris, Andrew Mark Miller and Cameron Cawthorne contributed to this report.
