Trump's clash with Project 2025 promoters shows it's all about self-image
Paul Dans, right, the principal author of Project 2025, speaks with an interviewer at a Heritage Foundation event as part of last month's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Credit: Newsday/Randi F. Marshall
Promoters of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a proposed conservative agenda aimed explicitly at the next Republican presidential administration, have been spitefully pushed off the GOP stage by presidential nominee Donald Trump and his innermost circle.
Trump campaign officials said in a statement Tuesday: "Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you."
Openly berating those who serve him, as if they're rivals, is nothing new for Trump. It’s never about ideas or the people’s government, just self-image. As part of this new alienation, Paul Dans, a former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management in the Trump White House, announced his departure as Project 2025 director.
The nonprofit foundation solicits contributions. Tying itself to Trump’s perceived successes is presumed to help its fundraising and boost the careers of those who devised the plan; Dans has a book coming out.
The Democrats have been citing Project 2025 to tie Trump to an allegedly extreme scheme which includes revamping Americans’ entitlements, killing some agencies, curbing the independence of the Justice Department, and turning many federal Civil Service posts into patronage appointments.
Despite Trump’s claim of distance from the project, Heritage president Kevin Roberts said in a statement: "Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue."
The group’s ideological affinity with MAGA seems unshaken, with Project 2025 staffed by current and former Trump acolytes. In May, when Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts stemming from his Stormy Daniels affair cover-up, Heritage posted an image on its X account of an upside-down American flag next to its own logo.
Trump has not said just what in Project 2025's 900-page plan he disagrees with. But it has always been difficult for even friendly media to get him to clarify issues.
He told those at a conservative Christian summit they won’t have to vote any more after November. Later, he told Fox News host Laura Ingraham his message was, "This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote anymore. I won’t need your vote. You can go back to not voting . . . Christians are not known as a big voting group."
But when Ingraham prodded him to dispute what she called Democrats’ "ridiculous" take-away that he wanted no more American elections, Trump refused to give a simple disclaimer.
While pushing Project 2025 away from himself, Trump has not done the same with running mate JD Vance. Some Republican senators have talked about whether it would help to get Vance to quit the ticket.
But Trump has defended him as "fantastic." Trump even crafted a rationale for Vance's past comments about childless "cat ladies."
"He feels family is good," Trump said. "And I don’t think there’s anything wrong in saying that."
So for Vance, the bloom isn’t off the rose yet. It will be interesting to see whether Vance must pass a bizarre initiation rite — like maybe parroting the line that presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, a Howard University grad, used to pass as other than Black. That is Trump's latest sensational remark — bound to be a bigger attention-getter than Project 2025.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
