THE WASHINGTON POST: Trump picks people who worked on Project 2025 despite distancing himself

In one of his earliest interviews as a leader of Donald Trump’s transition team, Howard Lutnick was emphatic.

“Absolutely zero. No connection. Zero,” Lutnick said on CNBC, referring to ties between the transition team and Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump term that had become a political liability for the Republican nominee.

“I won’t take a list from them,” Lutnick added in the Sept. 16 interview. “I won’t take a topic from them. I won’t touch them. They made themselves nuclear.”

But just over two months later, Trump has won the presidency and is assembling an administration that includes some picks for key positions that stand in stark contrast to his repeated efforts to distance himself from Project 2025.

The most striking example would be Russ Vought, whom Trump is leaning toward appointing to lead the White House budget office. Vought, who held the same role during Trump’s first term, was an architect of Project 2025, writing a chapter on the executive office - and advocating that the next president more aggressively wield his power.

Trump has named at least four other nominees who are credited by name in Project 2025, a product of the conservative Heritage Foundation: Tom Homan, Trump’s pick for “border czar”; John Ratcliffe, Trump’s planned nominee for CIA director; Brendan Carr, his selection to head the Federal Communications Commission; and Pete Hoekstra, Trump’s selection for ambassador to Canada. Homan, Hoekstra and Ratcliffe were listed as contributors to Project 2025’s 900-plus-page manifesto. Carr wrote an entire chapter on the agency that Trump now wants him to run.

One of the groups that advised Project 2025, America First Legal, is led by Stephen Miller, a former top Trump aide whom Trump has now picked to return to the White House as assistant to the president, deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser.

“As President Trump said many times, he had nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement for this report.

Democrats are claiming vindication after they warned voters not to believe Trump’s claims of having no connection to Project 2025.

“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,” Alex Floyd, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement. “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.”

Project 2025 emerged as a lightning rod over the summer, with Democrats going all out to highlight how, if implemented under Trump, it would give him unchecked power and further endanger reproductive rights, which was already a leading issue in the race. Harris ran ads on Project 2025 through the final days of the election campaign.

Trump made his first serious public effort to distance himself from Project 2025 in a July 5 post on social media.

“I have no idea who is behind it,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Trump stuck to the line throughout the remainder of the contest, even though many of his former administration officials were involved in the effort. Miller also sought to distance himself, telling ABC News days after Trump’s post that he had “zero involvement” with the effort.

Lutnick, a Wall Street CEO, sought to put an exclamation point on Trump’s statements after he was named transition co-chair. Lutnick told the New York Post in October that Project 2025 had made the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has been around for decades, “radioactive.”

Trump’s advisers repeatedly made known their frustrations with Project 2025 as the general-election campaign continued. A top campaign official, Chris LaCivita, said during an event at the Republican National Convention that Project 2025 was a “pain in the ass.”

Heritage worked to quell the uproar in late July when it announced that Project 2025 was phasing out its policy operations and that its director, former Trump administration personnel official Paul Dans, was leaving. The head of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, pushed back the publication of his book until after the election. The foreword was written by Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who at the time had been newly named Trump’s running mate.

A spokesperson for the Heritage Foundation said it was unavailable to comment.

Vought’s potential selection provides the clearest evidence yet that Trump’s banishing of Project 2025 was only temporary. Vought’s chapter in Project 2025 argued that the next president needs to act aggressively to rein in a “sprawling federal bureaucracy.”

Vought, during a lengthy interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that was released Monday, made clear he was interested in playing an influential role in Trump’s second term, whether inside government or out of it.

“I’ve always said, the last four years, I would never want to miss out on another chance to be at the president’s side,” Vought said.

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