Molly Jong-Fast writes:

Even Donald Trump doesn’t want anything to do with Project 2025—at least not publicly.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” he wrote on Truth Social. “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.”

Imagine how toxic the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 must be to get disavowed by Trump, the guy who has otherwise mused about being a “dictator” and planning mass deportations if elected. And that’s despite the fact that “Trump shares many policy goals with Project 2025,” as The Washington Post put it, from dismantling the Department of Education to scaling back climate regulations to gutting the civil service. The Guardian, too, found that Trump’s platform, “dubbed Agenda 47, overlaps with Project 2025 on most major policy issues.”

But the former president is running scared—like he has on abortion, an issue over which the GOP’s extremism has proven so poisonous to voters that Trump is now conveniently trying to look moderate—from a project that includes contributions from Russ Vought, who not only served as his onetime director of the Office of Management and Budget, but is also the platform committee policy director for next week’s Republican National Convention. Former senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller has also been linked to Project 2025, though he, too, has denied involvement with it. [Continue reading…]