Trump Allies Distance Themselves From Project 2025

A spokesperson for the think tank told The Epoch Times that it ‘does not speak for any candidate or campaign.’

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) speaks during a press conference in the U.S. Capitol in Washington on July 11, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Several Trump allies have followed former President Donald Trump’s lead and distanced themselves from The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, while the group said that it doesn’t back any particular candidate.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has been rumored to be a potential Trump vice presidential candidate, was asked multiple questions about the think tank’s plan during a July 7 interview with CNN.

“Think tanks do think tank stuff. They come up with ideas, they say things,” Mr. Rubio said in an interview with host Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But our candidate for president is Donald Trump.”

Mr. Rubio was specifically asked about the head of Project 2025, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who had made comments during a podcast about a “second American Revolution” that will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

“Well, he’s not running for president, is he?” Mr. Rubio said in reference to Mr. Roberts’s comments. “Our candidate is Donald Trump. I didn’t see Donald Trump say that.”

He added that the former president “is running on common sense, on restoring common sense versus the lunacy of the last four years and the far left and the shadow government that now is running our country.” The Florida Republican added that he does agree “with some of the things they stand for,” referring to The Heritage Foundation.

Stephen Miller, a former top Trump adviser who is expected to be tapped for a position in a second Trump administration, also distanced himself from the Heritage Foundation-backed initiative.

“A while back, I made a video for students on how to build skills. I have never been involved with Project 2025, not one word,” Mr. Miller wrote on social media over the past weekend, responding to claims that he was involved and that a video he made was being used by Project 2025. Such claims, he added, are “hoaxes.”

A Project 2025 spokesperson also told The Epoch Times over the weekend that it doesn’t back any particular presidential candidate, including former President Trump.

“As we’ve been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign. We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president,” the spokesperson said.

“But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.”

Mr. Roberts also said in a statement to other news outlets that Americans are carrying out a revolution “to take power back from the elites and despotic bureaucrats” and that it’s the political left that has a history of political violence.

On July 5, former President Trump issued a statement on his social media platform Truth Social that he isn’t involved with Project 2025, adding that he knows “nothing about” it or who is backing it.

Even with the former president’s comments, top Democrats and the Biden reelection campaign asserted in ads and on social media that the former president is connected to the initiative.

In a statement on the Democratic Party’s website, the party alleged that Project 2025 is part of an “extreme blueprint to rip away freedoms and undermine democracy,” adding that several former Trump White House “aides are leading the project and his campaign’s own press secretary starred in one of their recruitment videos,” referring to Mr. Miller.

Project 2025 includes a 900-page document that calls for significant reforms to the federal government, including a gutting of some federal agencies. The plans have been drawn up by The Heritage Foundation in coordination with a collection of other like-minded groups, it has said.

A number of people who have worked on Project 2025 worked in the Trump administration. Russ Vought, who was the former president’s director of the Office of Management and Budget and is heading up a key committee at the Republican National Convention, authored one of the project’s chapters.

Reuters contributed to this report.