Donald Trump sought to distance himself from the controversial Project 2025 blueprint for remaking government during his re-election campaign, but he has already named at least four individuals associated with the plan to serve in his administration.
The president-elect has tapped Tom Homan as "border czar," John Ratliffe as CIA director, Brendan Carr as head of the Federal Communications Commission and Pete Hoekstra as ambassador to Canada, and all four are credited by name in the 920-page manifesto, and so is Russ Vought, whom he's likely to appoint to lead the White House budget office, reported the Washington Post.
“Donald Trump spent months on the campaign trail lying to voters about the clear ties between his campaign and the wildly unpopular Project 2025 agenda,” said Alex Floyd, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. “Now, he’s finally showing his hand and picking a Cabinet full of Project 2025 lackeys to help him implement his dangerous and extreme blueprint.”
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Stephen Miller, a former Trump aide who will return to the White House as deputy chief of staff for policy, heads the America First Legal organization that advised Project 2025, a product of the conservative Heritage Foundation, but Trump's newly appointed press secretary flatly denied any connection between the politically toxic plan and the president-elect.
“As President Trump said many times, he had nothing to do with Project 2025,” said spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.
Trump has repeatedly tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation project, and top campaign official Chris LaCivita called it a “pain in the ass" during an event at the Republican National Convention and transition team leader Howard Lutnick said in September that everyone associated with it had "made themselves nuclear."
But vice president-elect J.D. Vance wrote the foreword to a forthcoming book written by Heritage Foundation head Kevin Robert, and some of the figures involved in Project 2025's drafting have found their way into the incoming administration.
“I’ve always said, the last four years," said Vought, who wrote a chapter about executive power, "I would never want to miss out on another chance to be at the president’s side."