Trump is 'running scared' from 'toxic' plan that has his ideas all over it: analysis

Ahead of the 2024 Republican National Convention, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has been making a concerted effort to distance himself from Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation's lengthy, detailed blueprint for a second Trump presidency. On his Truth Social platform, the former president posted, "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it."

But Trump's critics, including President Joe Biden, find that claim ludicrous — arguing that Project 2025 is a MAGA manifesto.

In an article published by Vanity Fair on July 9, journalist Molly Jong-Fast stresses that Project 2025's proposals are so "toxic" that Trump is now "running scared" from them.

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"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," Jong-Fast warns. "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 Vanity Fair journalist adds, "The Guardian, too, found that Trump's platform, 'dubbed Agenda 47, overlaps with Project 2025 on most major policy issues'…. The Trump ties run deep within Project 2025."

According to Jong-Fast, Trump's claim that he knows nothing about Project 2025 doesn't hold up — as people connected to it include close Trump allies like his former senior adviser Stephen Miller and Russ Vought (former director of the Office of Management and Budget)."

"The Project 2025 proposal, noted Politico, includes giving the president full power 'over quasi-independent agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies that have been the bane of Trump's political existence in the last few years," Jong-Fast notes. "It calls for breaking up the FBI, defunding the Justice Department, and eliminating the Department of Education, arguing that 'federal education policy should be limited.'"

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Jong-Fast adds, "Project 2025 is also about limiting freedoms, including abortion rights. It outlines using the Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-vice law, to prevent the mailing of the abortion pill mifepristone."

The journalist warns that a second Trump term would be much more dangerous than his first, as he is better organized now.

"Fortunately for the country," Jong-Fast explains, "Trump wasn't prepared to win the White House in 2016 and was wildly disorganized in office. Eight years later, however, there should be no uncertainty around how Trump might govern, with his minions crafting a far-right, Christian nationalist agenda that makes Richard Nixon look like Barack Obama."

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Molly Jong-Fast's full Vanity Fair article is available at this link (subscription required).