WASHINGTON ― Ahead of the November elections, Republicans have been scrambling to distance themselves from Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page, right-wing policy blueprint for radically restructuring the U.S. government under a second Trump presidency.
For Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who is running for reelection in a very tight race, the exact moment he backed away from it appears to have been between July and August, when he suddenly shifted from celebrating Project 2025 to pretending he didn’t know much about it at all.
The issue could come up ― and could prove to be awkward ― during Perry’s Tuesday night debate with his Democratic challenger, former TV news anchor Janelle Stelson. It’s their first and only debate before the November election. The Cook Political Report’s rating for this seat in Pennsylvania’s 10th congressional district is “lean Republican.” Perry and Stelson are virtually tied in the polls, per the polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
Perry was asked about Project 2025 in a July 13 interview with conservative radio show host Chris Stigall. Democrats and constitutional law experts have been denouncing the plan, which would expand presidential power and aims to impose an ultra-conservative social agenda on the country, as “extremist” and a “significant move to an authoritarian government.”
But in his interview, Perry said he agreed with Stigall in that there’s nothing “secret or subversive” about Project 2025, which was put together by former Trump administration officials, and calls for purging thousands of career civil servants from federal government agencies and replacing them with vetted conservatives in a second Trump administration.
“It’s a coalition of different organizations that are generally like-minded, but not completely, that are trying to be prepared for a future Trump presidency,” Perry said of the people behind it.
“Making Trump be the bogeyman hasn’t really worked over the last year-and-a-half, so now [Democrats] are making it the Heritage Foundation and this thing, this being prepared, having names vetted, having policies prepared, they’re making that the bogeyman,” he said.
The Republican congressman said what’s great about Project 2025 is that it would mean Trump could hit the ground running on day one of a second term, knowing that career government employees would be in place ready to “accept his agenda” and carry it out.
“These people on the left are scared to death that there actually could be some accountability, and that they’re not going to be able to just sit in there and promote their leftist agenda and say, ‘Oh, Mr. President, we don’t work for you. We’re just going to wait you out for four years and we’re going to continue to march towards communism,’” Perry told Stigall.
“They’re scared to death that there’s actually a plan, and that the right is preparing to remove them from the halls of power and get rid of their agenda and stop their agenda,” he added.
But a month later, during a tele-town hall on August 21, Perry acted like he didn’t know much about Project 2025 at all when a constituent asked him about it.
“To be truthful with you, Anthony, I haven’t read through it,” Perry told the constituent. “I mean, I’ve seen the cover of maybe the first page or something.”
The Pennsylvania Republican said he suspected there are things in the policy blueprint that he “would be averse to,” but then again, he just didn’t know.
“I don’t even know how many pages it is, Anthony,” said Perry. “I think it’s fairly voluminous.”
He suggested he would support parts of Project 2025 that he liked and oppose the parts he didn’t like if a future president used it as a roadmap. He also suggested he didn’t know much about who was behind Project 2025, even though, a month earlier, he knew all about it.
“I know some of the folks, well, at the Her– it was written, well, no, I don‘t know if it was shepherded or put together by the Heritage Foundation, but it’s not exclusive of the Heritage Foundation, or, to the Heritage Foundation,” Perry said. “It includes other organizations, as I understand it, and likely I don’t even know who some of those organizations are.”
He added that he’s “always a little careful, or a lot careful” about what he signs onto without reading the details of it because once you do, “You own it, and uh, the good with the bad.”
A Perry campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to why Perry went from praising Project 2025 to acting as if he didn’t know much about it a month later.
Perry, a six-term congressman, is an election denier whose phone was seized by the FBI in 2022 as part of its probe into the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol. A federal judge later revealed that Perry had tried to shield 2,219 files from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack ― and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
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The GOP congressman initially sued the Justice Department for taking his cellphone data, but quietly dropped his case.