President Donald Trump is trying to mislead the public about what’s in his “Big, Beautiful” spending bill, as it is proving as unpopular as the controversial conservative manifesto Project 2025, according to a political analyst.
“When people heard about it [Project 2025], they didn’t like it, and so the Trump campaign spent the rest of the summer lying about what they were doing,” Jason Johnson, author and political scientist, told MSNBC’s Ari Melber.
“You hear members of the Senate Republicans saying, ‘I don’t like this part of the bill,’ but they’re still going to end up voting for it. So that is a huge problem.”
The Senate is set to vote on proposed changes to Trump’s spending bill. Estimates suggest the Senate’s version of the federal spending bill would increase the country’s deficit by $3.3 trillion.
The Congressional Budget Office also predicts the bill could leave nearly 12 million people without Medicaid, as several Republicans are still believed to be on the fence about supporting the latest version of the legislation.
Johnson noted that the American public is also strongly against Trump’s megabill. A slew of polls have shown that Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” has negative net approval ratings ranging from -19 to -29 percentage points.
Project 2025, the 922-page manifesto penned by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, outlines how a potential Republican administration could overhaul the federal government. It was also unpopular with the American public in the lead-up to the 2024 election. A survey from Navigator, released last October, showed that 52 percent of Americans opposed Project 2025, compared to just 13 percent who supported it.
Trump repeatedly denied any connection to Project 2025, despite multiple members of his Cabinet—including his border czar, Tom Homan—being involved in drafting the playbook.
Many of Trump’s policies implemented during his second term, including mass deportations, removing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, and gutting federal funding, are featured in Project 2025.
Speaking to MSNBC, Johnson suggested some Republicans could suffer in the 2026 midterms if they back Trump’s spending bill, knowing the public widely opposes it.
“I don’t know how you explain to your constituents: you’re saying this thing is unpopular, and the clear math says that you’re going to blow up the budget, but I’m somehow going to sell this to you,” Johnson said. “The math ain’t mathing.
“Now the issue will be, again, if that math is going to affect them at the election booth next year—but the math ain’t mathing for anybody who knows how their taxes work right now.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
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