MIAMI (AP) — Donald Trump distanced himself Friday from Project 2025, a sweeping proposed overhaul of the federal government crafted by longtime allies and former officials in his administration, days after the head of the think tank responsible for the program suggested it would spark a second American Revolution.
“I don't know anything about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his social media website. “I have no idea who's behind it. I don't agree with some of the things they say and some of the things they say are just ridiculous and abominable. Whatever they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with it.”
Project 2025 outlines a dramatic expansion of presidential power and a plan to lay off as many as 50,000 government workers and replace them with Trump loyalists. President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has worked to draw more attention to the agenda, particularly as Biden tries to keep his fellow Democrats on board after his disastrous debate performance.
Trump has outlined his own plans to overhaul the government if he wins a second term, including organizing the largest deportation operation in U.S. history and imposing tariffs on potentially all imports. His campaign has previously warned outside allies against assuming they speak for the former president and suggested that their transition efforts on hold have been unhelpful.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast that Republicans are “taking this country back.” Former U.S. Rep. Dave Brat of Virginia hosted the show for Bannon, who is serving a four-month prison sentence.
“We are in the midst of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said.
The comments were widely circulated online and criticized by the Biden campaign, which said in a statement that Trump and his allies “dream of violent revolution to destroy the idea of America itself.”
Some of the people involved in Project 2025 are former senior administration officials. The director of the project is Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under Trump. Russ Vought, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump, wrote one of the chapters. John McEntee, a former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump administration, is a senior adviser.
A spokesperson for the plan said Project 2025 is not tied to a specific candidate or campaign.
“We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating for policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president,” the statement said. “But it will ultimately be up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations are implemented.”
Biden's re-election campaign has said the plan will “undermine democratic checks and balances and consolidate power in the White House if he wins.”
“Trump's campaign advisers and close allies wrote it — and are doing everything they can to get him elected so he can immediately implement their strategy,” the campaign said on its website.
On Thursday, as the country celebrated Independence Day and Biden prepared for his televised interview following his halting debate performance, the president’s campaign posted on X a shot from the dystopian TV drama “The Handmaid’s Tale” showing a group of women in the show’s red dresses and white hats standing in formation near a reflecting pool with a cross at one end where the Washington Monument is supposed to be. The story revolves around women stripped of their identities and forced to bear children for other couples in a totalitarian regime.
“Fourth of July under Trump’s Project 2025,” the message read.
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Jill Colvin, an Associated Press editor in New York, contributed to this report.
