One of the architects of the conservative Project 2025 manifesto demonstrated on CNN Monday the many ways in which Donald Trump is tied to the project.
Speaking to Kaitlin Collins on The Source, the project’s former director, Paul Dans, admitted that he’s visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate several times and has spoken with Trump’s campaign staff there, including the campaign’s co-chair Susie Wiles.
Collins: How many times have you been to Mar-a-Lago?
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 10, 2024
Project 2025 Architect: Several..
Collins: You meet with Trump Campaign people? pic.twitter.com/dFDdWD6nQF
Trump has tried desperately to distance himself and his campaign from the conservative Project 2025 manifesto, with little success. Collins pressed Dans, pointing out that six of Trump’s Cabinet members contributed to the document, along with some of Trump’s advisers, such as Peter Navarro and Johnny McEntee.
“And so some people say, ‘OK, well, 140 of his staffers worked on it. How can you say that he has nothing to do with it?” Collins asked Dans.
Dans tried to explain it away by saying Trump “personally didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Certainly, a lot of folks, you know, worked on it, came out of the Trump administration, but that’s natural for any Republican administration. You’re going to have the carryover for the next one,” Dans said.
Dans resigned as director of the project in July, thanks in part to Trump’s attempts to disavow the conservative manifesto and in part due to a power struggle for control over staffing in a possible second Trump term. But Dans’s resignation did not tamp down criticism from Democrats over the project’s aims, nor did it successfully give Trump any distance.
The project’s agenda items include everything from the dismantling of government agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, to the implementation of national abortion bans and contraception restrictions. Trump has influenced the project, and his running mate, J.D. Vance, also has extensive connections to it, even writing the foreword to a book by one of the plan’s architects, Kevin Roberts. Project 2025 has become an effective attack line by Democrats, who have successfully pointed out that it’s a Republican wish list with disturbing aims.
