WASHINGTON — A growing list of conservative groups that previously endorsed Project 2025 — which calls for the criminalization of adult content production and distribution — have reportedly distanced themselves from the self-described “presidential transition” blueprint, following Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he disagrees with an unspecified number of its positions.
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts also attempted to calm the public about the extreme-right wish list offered by the 900+-page document, stating that he prefers to think of the plan as “sort of the menu from Cheesecake Factory.”
“It’s every possible thing that somebody might want to take on,” he told reporters outside the Republican National Convention. “It is impossible for every individual conservative to agree with everything in the document.”
Investigative news website The Intercept reported Friday that it has identified seven conservative organizations that have been removed from Project 2025’s advisory board member list since Heritage first announced the initiative two years ago: libertarian groups Competitive Enterprise Institute and FreedomWorks, Stephen Miller’s America First Legal Foundation, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Discovery Institute, anti-abortion group Americans United for Life and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
In late March, Heritage added a disclaimer to the initiative’s webpage, stating, “The opinions of Project 2025 and The Heritage Foundation do not necessarily represent the opinions of every one of its advisory board partners.”
Trump Repeats Disavowal, as Previous Full Endorsement Surfaces
As XBIZ reported, for the past few weeks Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, which was published last year but not disavowed by the Trump campaign until Roberts implied in a June interview that he was ready for a potentially violent revolution.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social earlier this month, Trump wrote, “I know 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.”
Given Trump’s documented history of stating outright, easily debunked falsehoods, his allegation that he has “no idea who is behind” Project 2025 surprised few commentators.
Also notable was the former president’s vagueness about exactly which of Project 2025’s proposals he disagrees with.
More recently, during a campaign appearance in Michigan on Saturday, Trump told the crowd, “You have the radical left and the radical right and they come up — I don’t know what the hell it is. [They say] ‘It’s Project 25. He’s involved in project’ [sic]. And then they read some of the things and they are extreme, they’re seriously extreme. But I don’t know anything about it, I don’t want to know anything about it.”
The Biden — now Harris — campaign’s X account was quick to dig out a keynote speech Trump gave before the Heritage Foundation in 2022, during which he told a different story.
“Our country is going to hell,” the recently confirmed Republican presidential nominee told the Heritage audience. “The critical job of institutions such as Heritage [is] to lay the groundwork. And Heritage does such an incredible job at that. They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do, when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America, and that’s coming.
“Already we have shown the power of our winning formula, working closely with many of the great people at Heritage over the four incredible years that we’ve worked with you a lot,” Trump continued. “They’re going to work on some other things that are going to be very exciting.”
Project 2025’s blueprint document for a second Trump administration — which the group repeatedly claimed until this month that it was planning to staff — states that pornography “has no claim to First Amendment protection.”
“Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women,” the document continues. “Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
