Former US President Donald Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025, a playbook crafted by conservative group the Heritage Foundation, which seeks to radically transform the federal government and American life as we know it. However, contradictory developments, including the emergence of an old plane photograph of Trump and the Foundation’s leader, and the presence of many of his trusted former White House officials on the advisory panel of the plan, paint a questionable image.
In a July TruthSocial post, Trump claimed he knew nothing about Project 2025. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them,” he added.
In another social media post, he wrote: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it. The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part. By now, after all of these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERYTHING!”
Coincidentally, his post emerged online a day after Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in an interview that the country was “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
What do we know about Donald Trump and Kevin Roberts’ plane photo?
The controversial conservative blueprint has especially attracted considerable backlash since early 2024 as the pro-Trump agenda hopes for the former president’s return with a second term. But as Trump himself consistently insists that he had nothing to do with the far-right Project 2025 policy, while maintaining that he’s not privy to the blueprint’s architect, an old picture has made it to the internet that says otherwise.
The previously unreported picture (see it here) snapped Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in the same frame. They once shared a private flight from the presidential hopeful’s Palm Beach residence to the annual conference on Amelia Island in April 2022.
The unlikely duo reportedly flew to a Heritage Foundation conference together, where Trump said, “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” The Washington Post shed light on remarks by people privy to the trip details, plane-tracking data and the old plane photograph, highlighting that the former president has been in touch with Roberts.
Did Trump and Roberts talk Project 2025 on the plane ride?
In a separate interview with the outlet, Roberts seemed to have confirmed that he had “personally… talked to President Trump about Project 2025”, citing his role in the project, which “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.”
The report further quotes a Heritage official, claiming that Roberts, who was in the early stages of crafting Project 2025, lightly touched upon the issue on the flight. However, a disinterested Trump switched topics. Subsequently, a Trump spokesperson said that the former president and Roberts never brought up Project 2025 on the plane ride.
The Heritage Foundation has published a book of policy recommendations for the next Republican administration since 1980. As for Roberts’ active role in the project, he recently took over the day-to-day management following director Paul Dans’ exit amid “pressure from Trump campaign leadership,” the Daily Beast reported.
Reddit goes up in flames as the 2022 plane ride pic emerges online
Trump and Roberts’ plane ride snap particularly blew up on Reddit, where the Republican presidential candidate’s old remarks about disavowing Project 2025 invited major blowback. A flurry of comments on the post made a stand about the pair possibly working in collusion with each other.
Also read | Ex-royal staffer reveals who ‘could act as a peacemaker for Harry, William and Charles’
Redditors couldn’t look away from one of the most eye-grabbing aspects of the photo – Robert’s cufflink, which appears to bear the iconic American symbol of the Liberty Bell. As one of the most significantly unforgettable symbols of American independence, the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, despite its crack, harks back to the vision of several movements that cemented the nation’s history, including women’s suffrage and the rise of abolitionism. History.Com notes that the bell sounded the celebratory alarm of Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette’s arrival.
The cracked piece of American history was also linked to the abolition movement in the 1830s. Abolitionist newspaper William Llyod Garrison also published a poem called “The Liberty Bell”, which highlighted how the “mighty bell” would “herald well Fair Freedom’s form.”
The 1839 publication also reads: “Ring it Southward, till its voice
For slavery toll, for slavery toll;
And Freedom’s wakening touch rejoice
Both limb and soul.”
Netizens were outraged to note the uncanny similarities between the Liberty Bell and the Heritage Foundation’s logo. “Also, the gall on this guy for wearing (what appear to be) Liberty Bell cufflinks after writing a manifesto about killing or enslaving those who are not of your political party or religion. Scum,” a comment read.
Others also drew focus back to Roberts’ direct quote about Project 2025 as he “said publically, on camera, proudly, that there would be no bloodshed as long as Democrats didn’t resist… And here he is smiling for a pic with a former President of the United States, and candidate for POTUS. It’s fu**ing sickening.”
Project 2025 controversy
Controversy over Roberts’ “second American Revolution” especially blew out of proportion as focus drifted away to the Heritage Foundation leader’s upcoming book, “Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America,” which featured an introduction penned by Trump’s vice-presidential pick JD Vance. The Ohio senator’s piece, obtained by the New Republic, extolls the Foundation as “the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. Roberts’ book release has been postponed until after the November presidential election.
Although the Foundation’s plans for the first 180 days of the presumed second Trump administration remain under wraps, they are already expected to be “the most radical, extreme and dangerous parts of Project 2025,” House Democrats Jared Huffman of California and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts said in an open letter.
Also read | Joe Biden predicts what will happen if Trump loses 2024 White House race: ‘You can’t love your country…’
The Post also cited an anonymous Project 2025 source who said contributors had seen Trump’s attempts to repudiate it as “a disaster, a catastrophe… the wishful-thinking school is that this will all blow over.”
What is Project 2025?
Spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, the proposal brings together an advisory board of over 100 conservative groups who have overseen the initiative, which is founded on four pillars. The first pillar of Project 2025 has been the most prominent focus of blaring criticism, as it included a nearly 900-page policy book, which involves completely shattering the existing federal government.
In addition, many chapters are written by names from the Trump administration, including Russ Vought from the Office of Management and Budget, former acting Defence Secretary Chris Miller, ex-director of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, and others.
Some policies of the agenda highlight less federal intervention in education, support for school choice, increased enforcement of immigration laws, mass deportations and a border wall construction.
Other recommendations for the Department of Health and Human Services call for the reversal of the 24-year-old approval of abortion pill mifepristone. Some proposals target reinstating stringent rules for its use, permitting it to be taken up to seven weeks into a pregnancy, instead of 10 weeks. Furthermore, it would call off it being dispensed through the mail.
“The Family Agenda” section recommends the Health and Human Services chief “proudly state that men and women are biological realities” and that “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”
Harris for President spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said, “Trump, Vance and their Project 2025 allies can try and hide the ball from the American people, but voters know where they stand — and that they’re trying desperately to drag us backward.”