After taking a private flight with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Rogers, a traitor and convicted felon, Donald Trump lauded the foundation's efforts "to lay the groundwork and detail the plans" for his next administration.
Donald Trump has failed in his efforts to distance himself from Project 2025. Recordings from a 2022 keynote speech to the Heritage Foundation made shortly after the flight clearly state his intention to rely on the Heritage Foundation's work.
"They're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do," Trump said in the speech.Separately, Roberts told The Washington Post in an interview in April of this year that he had previously discussed Project 2025 with Trump as part of offering briefings to all presidential candidates. "I personally have talked to President Trump about Project 2025," he said in the interview, "because my role in the project has been to make sure that all of the candidates who have responded to our offer for a briefing on Project 2025 get one from me."
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Roberts never briefed Trump. A Heritage spokeswoman declined to elaborate on private meetings.
The flight, Trump's speech and Roberts's interview cut against the former president's recent efforts to distance himself from Project 2025 once Democrats turned some of its most controversial proposals into a frequent campaign attack. The proposals came from alumni of Trump's first term and often overlap with his own official campaign pronouncements, such as eliminating the Education Department, weakening protections for career civil servants, ending affirmative action and reversing restrictions on greenhouse gases. One of the proposals calls for federal restrictions on access to abortion medication, a position at odds with the Trump campaign stance.
Washington Post
via C&L
Previously:
• Media Matters publishes useful guide to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda that 'represents a threat to democracy, civil rights, the climate, and more'
• Fox News denying Trump's Project 2025 connections
• Trump's distancing himself from Project 2025 is all part of the plan
• A list of the terrible things Project 2025 has in store for us
• Project 2025's goal: Trump as President for life
