Although former President Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from the far-right Heritage Foundation’s authoritarian Project 2025 playbook for the next Republican administration, his own daughter-in-law is now undercutting those efforts.
In a recent interview on The Blaze’s Pat Gray unleashed podcast, Lara Trump — who also co-chairs the Republican National Committee — agreed with the host that Democrats’ criticism of the 920-page policy plan was overblown. As the progressive group Media Matters for America reported, Gray downplayed the attacks on Project 2025 as “kind of crazy” and countered that the policy proposals he’s seen in the document “are pretty reasonable.”
“I mean, these are things that just make sense for the Conservative Party,” Gray said. “Is it something that Anders feels it is necessary to distance himself from?”
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“Well, I think you’re right, there are some ideas in there that are very productive and will be good for this country,” Lara Trump said. “There are some ideas in there that are maybe a little more extreme, and the problem is that Donald Trump has had nothing to do with Project 2025. This is a think tank.”
The claim that her father-in-law “has had nothing to do with Project 2025” may be partially true because the former president has not played a role in actively shaping the policies in the book. However, she is misleading in her claims of Trump’s total ignorance of the extremist proposals listed in the document. As Russ Vought of the Center for Renewing America — a key partner in Project 2025 — told two undercover reporters, Trump has given his full support to those behind the sweeping policy outline.
“He’s been in our organization and he’s raised money for our organization,” Vought said. “He’s blessed it… I told him what I wanted to do… So he’s very supportive of what we’re doing.”
In addition, the Heritage Foundation has previously boasted in its fundraising materials about its closeness to the former president’s first administration. This includes the placement of several Heritage alumni in key decision-making roles in his White House and the implementation of about two-thirds of its policy proposals in his first year as president.
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As People magazine wrote in its deep dive into Project 2025, “Heritage lays out a far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that would destroy the separation of church and state, replace nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists, and strengthen the president’s authority over independent agencies.”
“While Project 2025 is not formally part of Trump’s campaign platform, it has been led and supported by several influential people in his circle,” People’s Kyler Alvord wrote. “The project’s top executives all worked in the Trump White House, and a number of the manifesto’s contributors also served in the Trump administration, including but not limited to former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and imprisoned former trade adviser Peter Navarro.”
Watch Lara Trump’s segment below, or by clicking this link.
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