Trump-friendly Fox News has called out the president’s blatant dishonesty over Project 2025 after he announced a meeting with the architect of the far-right manifesto.
Project 2025 is a sprawling transition plan developed by the Heritage Foundation and allied Trump loyalists that outlines how a second Trump administration could gut federal agencies and consolidate executive power.
But it was not popular on the campaign trail, and Trump was forced to disown it multiple times. On Thursday, Trump announced his change of tune.
“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” he said on Truth Social.
“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” he added.
Discussing the about-face on Fox’s Special Report, guest host John Roberts juxtaposed the president’s remarks with comments he made last year on the campaign trail.
“Remember what Donald Trump said a year ago,” said Roberts, teeing up a Truth Social post from July 2024 shortly after the document became public knowledge.
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote at the time. “I have no idea who’s 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.”
“So, I’m wondering,” Roberts asked the panel. “Did he just learn about Project 2025 in the last year, or did he know about it all along?”
Fellow panelist Francesca Chambers responded by expressing doubt that Trump would be personally involved in cutting agencies at a granular level, and would likely lean on Vought to send messages to various agencies, saying, “No, you send us plans for what you think that you should cut and then we’ll approve them.”
Project 2025 was a major flashpoint on the 2024 campaign trail.
Trump repeatedly distanced himself from the project while campaigning, calling the plan “seriously extreme,” conceived by the “severe right,” and claimed not to have read it during a televised debate with Kamala Harris.
“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump told Harris during last year’s debate, later telling Fox News, “That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it,” he added.
Despite the public denial, allies and right-wing commentators bragged that Project 2025 was the “agenda” all along in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s electoral victory.
“It is my honor to inform you all that Project 2025 was real the whole time,” right-wing influencer Benny Johnson wrote a day after the election. The MAGA podcast host gloated that “Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol.”
Many of Trump’s executive orders issued during the early days of his presidency, including axing DEI initiatives, rolling back transgender rights, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, and expanding oil and gas production, were featured in the project’s agenda.
The Project 2025 tracker, an independent watchdog that monitors the implementation of the initiative, reports that the current administration has already implemented 48 percent of the project’s proposals.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for further comment.
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