CNN’s Abby Phillip on Tuesday thoroughly fact-checked Donald Trump’s claim that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025 ― presenting evidence of the former president’s connections with the people and groups that drew up the bundle of far-right policy proposals and the plans to implement them.
On Friday, Trump claimed in a social media post: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.”
“That’s BS, no matter which way you shovel it,” Phillip said.
First, she showed footage of Trump in 2022 praising the Heritage Foundation ― the group that created the extreme blueprint for a potential second Trump administration ― as a “legendary institution.”
“So just how influential was Heritage in the Trump administration?” Phillip went on. “Well, just listen to Trump’s own former vice president.”
In a 2019 clip, then-Vice President Mike Pence said the conservative foundation had been “fighting side by side with this president and this administration since day one,” describing how “we drew on the scholarship and the resources of this historic think tank.”
CNN also aired footage of Trump, in February, lauding the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, who in a speech at the same event spoke of the Project 2025 proposal and its plan to “take back this country.”
More than 30 former Trump administration and campaign officials were involved in the project, including Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro and Ben Carson, all of whom “Trump would have a hard time convincing us he doesn’t actually know,” Phillip noted.
She showed clips of Trump praising those men.
Next, Phillip pointed to the contradiction in Trump’s own statement distancing himself from the project. Immediately after claiming he knew nothing about the proposal, Trump said he disagreed with some of the “ridiculous and abysmal” things it contains.
Finally, Phillip pointed to the way in which much of the project “lines up completely with Trump’s own promises,” including gutting the Department of Education, crushing the independence of the Justice Department, overhauling the federal government to make it easier to fire civil servants, and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
“While Trump may not be the architect of this blueprint, his loyalists are their developers. He is certainly the mogul,” Phillip concluded. “And remember, he always notes that he only hires the best people.”