Trump Flipped Out That ‘Lunatic’ Project 2025 Could Tank His Campaign

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-project-2025-abortion-campaign-1235071152/

40 comments

  3. TL;DR: Trump is flipping out not because he disagrees with it but because it’s starting to affect his reelection chances.

    >“Trump can try to distance himself from this, but 70 to 80 percent of the people who wrote [Project 2025] are going to be in his second administration — the cabinet, under secretaries, assistant secretaries, the senior advisers. They’re all going to be the foot soldiers in a second Trump administration!” one of Project 2025’s contributors, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, tells Rolling Stone. “You can’t look at this constellation of organizations and people without seeing that they’re all his people.”

  4. ***Exclusive From Rolling Stone’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez:***

    As he entered the final stretch of the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump spent much of this month trying to disown the highly Trumpy, Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025 — to the point that he even got his fans to boo the initiative during a recent campaign rally. His protracted freakout over the conservative project — to which he has multiple direct ties, and which is only as extreme as it is largely because of his influence — is driven almost entirely by Trump’s fear over one thing.

    When the twice-impeached ex-president and convicted felon took to social media in early July to make the (patently absurd) claim that “I know nothing about Project 2025 [and] I have no idea who is behind it,” he added, “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” He did not specify what “things” he meant.

    But according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, shortly before he posted that brief message, Trump had been privately — and very bitterly — complaining about the abortion policies laid out in the lengthy Project 2025 manifesto, and trashing the Project 2025-linked “lunatics” who keep demanding unpopular abortion bans and restrictions. Among the policy proposals in Project 2025’s policy roadmap are plans to end federal approval for abortion pills, use federal agencies for expanded “abortion surveillance,” restrict access to emergency contraception, end the federal requirement that hospitals provide medically necessary emergency abortion care, and revive a 150-year-old law that could serve as a de facto national abortion ban.

    For what it’s worth, some of the people who helped author Project 2025’s abortion provisions were appointed under Trump to influential federal posts during his first stint in the White House — including Roger Severino, who headed the HHS’ Office of Civil Rights under Trump, and Gene Hamilton, who worked in Trump’s Justice Department and Homeland Security Department.

    Read more: [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-project-2025-abortion-campaign-1235071152/](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-project-2025-abortion-campaign-1235071152/)

  5. Dog whistle for long enough and people might get sick of the dogs barking.

  7. HF is the neocons Oracle of delphi, trump is maga

  8. This is why he’s always complaining about his cronies taking notes. He hates them taking notes at during criminal fucking conspiracies.

  9. Weird that he gets upset that people are talking about what he’s actually going to do instead of the vague “drain the swamp” or “make America great agan”

  10. It is scary that the warped views of ‘rump & crew have been this successful politically…

  11. Did you think you were using them instead of the other way around?

  12. Well Trump, you can thank the very weird radical right conspiracy nuts that you breed and encourage to get their votes.

  13. Oh no, if it isn’t the consequences of your actions. Again.

  16. His radical plans to destroy America’s government will remain a haunting influence over his whole campaign. they are not just rumors; he and his followers actually wrote them down. they are his he owns him and there’s no hiding from them

  17. I feel like Trump just likes the Heritage foundation people because they told him “we will do all the work”. That way he can sit back and golf all the time

  18. I think it’s safe to say it probably has. I can’t imagine that anyone believes theyve abandoned it entirely.

  19. It’s mostly because he’s so weird, but I love that Project 2025 is finally in the spotlight. This isn’t just a Trump thing; it’s a Republican thing since they have gone full fascist

  20. And then the guy who was in charge of writing it got fired. Almost like Trump has quite a bit of say in how the organization that created it is run.

  21. All these wannabe fascists want to run thir agenda through Trump and Trump just wants to stay out of jail. 

    Sooner later the music’s going to stop and there’s just not going to be enough chairs for everyone to sit down in.

  22. Then maybe you need to talk more about it and expose all its parts, instead of promising people they wont need to vote anymore if you get elected

    Oh wait- you arent upset about it, youre just upset that we know and we might not pick you… oh ok

  24. Don’t be gullible. He doesn’t think it’s “lunatic”, he’s just pissed that it’s actually hurting him in the polls.

    This is merely propaganda aimed at making him seem lucid. He isn’t. If he’s elected, it will be full steam ahead on Project 2025, but it will have been rebranded by then.

  25. If Trump called the guy a lunatic it was literally only so there could be headlines that said he called him a lunatic to help him distance himself from Project 2025. Trump is Project 2025, Project 2025 is Trump.

  26. You know, we knew about project 2025 before it took off on social media. I kept thinking, “why isn’t anyone talking about this. It’s all right there in writing”. When it took off, I thought, “FINALLY! People are paying attention!!” But, I don’t think this project 2025 stuff has been canceled at all. It’s just gone underground. No one can convince me otherwise. But, now Trump supporters can retort, “Trump got that whole thing shut down! He doesn’t support it!”, whether it’s actually true or not is irrelevant. Maybe that’ll play well with those swing voters, but I kinda doubt it.

  27. > But according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, shortly before he posted that brief message, Trump had been privately — and very bitterly — complaining about the abortion policies laid out in the lengthy Project 2025 manifesto, and trashing the Project 2025-linked “lunatics” who keep demanding unpopular abortion bans and restrictions. Among the policy proposals in Project 2025’s policy roadmap are plans to end federal approval for abortion pills, use federal agencies for expanded “abortion surveillance,” restrict access to emergency contraception, end the federal requirement that hospitals provide medically necessary emergency abortion care, and revive a 150-year-old law that could serve as a de facto national abortion ban.

    The man chose JD Vance – a man who has existed solely on a pro-life platform of forced birth, trashing Appalachians, and hurting women – as his running mate and we’re supposed to believe he doesn’t want Project 2025?

    Okay, Jan.

  28. Yeah no duh, dipshit (to Trump, not the author).  Outside of basic human decency reasons to oppose Project 2025, it’s fucking stupid to build and run a campaign off of policies that whenever anybody with half a braincell looks at it, they hate it. 

    Now everybody who’s got a working ear knows what it is after Heritage PUBLISHED the whole thing, knows that Trump effectively birthed that thing, that Vance and almost anyone that was and could be in his cabinet has incredibly close ties to it, and that his campaign’s ‘Agenda 47’ is just a version of Project 2025 that doesn’t say the quiet part AS loud as 2025 does. There is no effective way for the GOP’s campaign to distance them from Project 2025 anymore, especially since the person leading the Heritage foundation now is the one who said their attempted takeover of the US government would “remain bloodless if the Left allows it to be”.

    Political opponents don’t say that. Would-be terrorists say that. 

  29. They said the quiet part out loud….on purpose and now regret the negative publicity, not their shitty policy. Fucking weirdos.

  30. He got a better score from the heritage foundation in his first term than Reagan did. 64% to 60% or something like that. This is for the percent of policies that lean in their favor.

    They have been at this since 1973. They’re not going away. Keep voting against them.

  31. Please pay attention folks!! These extremist Republicans are seeing how far they can push things until you complain. They may seem like they will back off a bit, but they will push little by little until you just don’t notice the nightmarish things they are doing.

  33. If Trump is so worried about P25 he could help get Kamala elected.

  34. Presidential candidate mad that people stop liking him once they start to see past his bullshit and look at his campaign policy.

    Maybe if people paid more attention to policy instead of whichever candidate can say the flashiest shit we wouldn’t have such fucked up politics in this country

  35. Dem messaging of ‘We’re not going back’ is brilliant! Its easy to make it about policy if the Rep policy is just as awful and toxic as their candidate. 

  36. For those that think Trump won’t adapt Project 2025, he didn’t hesitate to work with the Heritage Foundation before and during his first term:

    >

    [https://www.heritage.org/impact/trump-administration-embraces-heritage-foundation-policy-recommendations](https://www.heritage.org/impact/trump-administration-embraces-heritage-foundation-policy-recommendations)

    >

    The Trump team may not have been prepared to staff the government, but the Heritage Foundation was. In the summer of 2014, a year before Trump even declared his candidacy, the right-wing think tank had started assembling a 3,000-name searchable database of trusted movement conservatives from around the country who were eager to serve in a post-Obama government. The initiative was called the Project to Restore America, a dog-whistle appeal to the so-called silent majority that foreshadowed Trump’s own campaign slogan.

    [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/magazine/trump-government-heritage-foundation-think-tank.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/magazine/trump-government-heritage-foundation-think-tank.html)

  38. “My plan to be a dictater is ruining my chances at winning a democratic election!” – Some idiot named Donald.

  39. Project 2025 wasn’t panned by Trump initially because he thought his following would accept anything he pushed. I mean [the guy sold a Bible with his name on it.](https://apnews.com/article/trump-god-bless-usa-bible-greenwood-2713fda3efdfa297d0f024efb1ca3003)

    The whole idea was pushed by those who wrote it, and the rhetoric was pretty extreme, talking about civil war and a [a second revolution being bloodless if the left just lets everything happen.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/03/project-2025-kevin-roberts-scotus-immunity-ruling/74289539007/)

    Overall, it spooked a good part of their base, and it’s evident due to all of this going on. I can’t blame them. I’m not even trying to poke fun at conservatives right now. The rhetoric this campaign has spun, taking about being sent by god and fighting and shit, it really is “lunatic” type stuff.

  40. I mean imagine doing something so dumb that even Trump realizes it’s dumb.

Leave a Reply