A Trump appointee’s post shows that Project 2025 was the plan all along
On the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump swore he knew “nothing” about Project 2025. As a candidate, he said he didn’t even know who had written the far-right blueprint for his second term, called some of its ideas “absolutely ridiculous” and “abysmal” and argued it was “pure disinformation” for Democrats to try to link him to that plan.
In case it wasn’t clear at the time, Trump was lying.
Along with other journalists, I tried to make that as clear as possible during the campaign, noting the ties that Trump had with its authors, the track record the Heritage Foundation had on getting his support for its ideas and his own previous remarks — as well as the fact that he had declined to say specifically which ideas in Project 2025’s 900 pages he considered so ridiculous.
When he won a second term, Trump dropped the pretense and began enacting Project 2025’s proposals, in some cases to the letter. In the eight months since inauguration, he has checked off most of its major proposals:
• launching a mass deportation program
• purging civil servants and replacing them with partisan loyalists
• defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
• reducing the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s role in disaster response
• eliminating federal “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts
• banning transgender troops in the military
At the same time, he appointed Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget. He nominated contributor E.J. Antoni as Commissioner of Labor Statistics, despite the latter’s lack of the usual credentials. (The Senate has not voted on Antoni’s confirmation yet.) And he appointed Brendan Carr, who literally wrote the chapter on the Federal Communications Commission, as chairman of the FCC.
In the past, a president who made a major reversal of a campaign promise might be expected to show some contrition, or else try to explain their reversal due to changing circumstances, as Woodrow Wilson did when he broke his pledge to keep the U.S. out of World War I or George H.W. Bush did when he signed a budget that raised taxes.
Trump has given no explanation. But the FCC’s Carr just made quite clear that he thinks this is all a big joke.
After ABC suspended late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel, Kevin McHale, an actor and singer you may remember as Artie on the T.V. show “Glee,” posted on X that “this was all in Project 2025, btw.” Carr then responded by posting a common reaction GIF of actor Jack Nicholson from the movie “Anger Management” nodding “yes.”
It’s bad enough that Trump lied about his platform, adopted deeply unpopular policies after his inauguration, and appointed a loyalist to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who seeks to punish everyone from local reporters to late-night comedians for exercising their First Amendment rights. But this makes it even worse.
Some of the 77 million Americans who voted for Trump genuinely believed him when he claimed he had nothing to do with Project 2025. (Trust me, I heard from them when I wrote about it.) Some genuinely believed the presidential candidate would keep his promises or follow through on his promise to lower the price of eggs. From conservative podcasters to Republican senators—sources they trusted—everyone encouraged them to believe him, even when they knew they were wrong.
Look, politicians can sometimes distort the facts or make promises they can’t keep. But studies show that they actually try to keep most of their campaign promises. And when they don’t, they usually seek to justify themselves so that voters can determine whether their promises are justified. This is just one aspect of the political tug-of-war.
But Carr’s message treats all of this as a broad joke. This isn’t an insult to journalists like me, or even to the third man on a TV show that ended in 2015. It’s an insult to Trump voters themselves, who should be outraged at being treated like fools for believing him.
