Former President Donald Trump flew on a private jet with the president of the Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank behind Project 2025, on his way to a conference the institute held in 2022, according to a new report.
The Washington Post obtained flight tracking data and a photo of Trump traveling with Kevin Roberts in April 2022. The image seems to further undercut Trump’s claims that he has “no idea” who was responsible for the controversial conservative blueprint — even though more than a hundred people who worked in his administration had a hand in producing it.
Roberts took over as president of the Heritage Foundation in 2021 and was a key architect of Project 2025, a 920-page document with policy aims that include replacing federal employees with political appointees and eliminating the Department of Education.
“They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,” Trump said in a keynote speech at a Heritage Foundation conference after the 2022 flight.
Roberts told the Post in an interview last April that he had discussed Project 2025 with the former president as part of a briefing the Heritage Foundation offered to anyone hoping to win the White House.
“I personally have talked to President Trump about Project 2025 because my role in the project 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,” Roberts told the newspaper.
Trump, for his part, has continued to deny he had any knowledge of the blueprint, and his spokesperson told the Post that Roberts never briefed him. A Heritage spokesperson told the Post that Trump seemed “uninterested” in what Roberts had to say during the flight.
Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has moved to distance himself from Project 2025 amid fierce criticism from Democrats, and the Heritage Foundation replaced the director of the project last month.
“Project 2025 has never and will never be an accurate reflection of President Trump’s policies,” the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, told the publication. “As President Trump himself and our campaign leadership have repeatedly stated, President Trump’s 20 promises to the forgotten men and women and the [Republican Party] platform are the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term.”
Roberts also postponed the release of a new book this week, which includes a foreword written by Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, until after the November election.
The Democratic Party quickly pounced on the Post’s report, calling Trump a “liar” and saying the photo confirms how the former president and his running mate “are fully connected to this dangerous plan to rip away our freedoms, threaten our democracy, and take our country backward.”
“While Trump and Vance desperately try to distance themselves from their own ultra-MAGA platform, voters are learning more and more about Project 2025’s wildly unpopular proposals every day ― and are ready to reject this extreme, far-right blueprint at the ballot box in November,” Alex Floyd, the Democratic National Committee’s rapid response director, said in a statement.