University of Kwazulu-Natal

In Undercover Video Project 2025 Architect Says Trump Is Very

Bonisiwe Shabane
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in undercover video project 2025 architect says trump is very

Your support allows Common Dreams to continue covering the stories and amplifying the voices that the corporate media never will. Make a tax-deductible year-end gift to ensure we can sustain the reporting needed to meet the challenges of 2026. Project 2025 architect Russell Vought speaks to an undercover journalist and paid actor with the Centre for Climate Reporting. A watchdog group secretly recorded Russell Vought, a former Trump administration official, explaining his plan to get confidential Project 2025 plans into the Republican nominee's hands if he wins in November. A key architect of Project 2025 believed he was speaking to relatives of a wealthy right-wing donor when he described his plan to share a flurry of secret executive orders, proposed regulations, and other... In fact, Russell Vought—who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump's first term—unwittingly divulged his strategy to an undercover journalist and a paid actor working undercover for the Centre...

“We have detailed agency plans,” Russell Vought bragged in a 2024 speech. “We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now.” Former president Donald Trump with then–acting director of Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought in the White House in 2019. As the mediasphere continues to process the fallout from Sunday’s MAGA hate-fest at Madison Square Garden, an equally chilling spectacle should command at least as much attention: ProPublica has unearthed videos of Russell Vought,... If you don’t know who Vought is, that’s a first-order failure of our political press.

He served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump and has spent the past four years commandeering the Center for Renewing America, a right-wing religious think tank serving up... Vought is also by most accounts the central strategist behind Project 2025, the full-scale plan to rebuild the federal government in the image of pure MAGA grievance politics, bigotry, and misogyny; in addition, he... The chapter he contributed to the Project 2025 governing blueprint makes the case for a militantly weaponized federal bureaucracy, purged of nonpartisan career staffers, and jolted into witch-hunting form by a new cadre of... It’s a vision of the Caesarist model of a right-wing “unitary executive” on steroids, ginned up from a paranoid Christian nationalist vision of the administrative state as a rolling, demonic assault on constitutional liberties. Every effort must be expended, Vought argued there, to face down the Mephistophelian treachery of a nomenklatura “carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a... In the leaked videos of Vought’s addresses before gatherings of his think tank—a group with close ties to both the Trump White House and key Trump strategists such as Steve Bannon—this rhetoric comes off...

It’s long been a truism that Trumpist allegations against an infidel, America-hating opposition are raw acts of psychological projection, but Vought takes this tic to a whole new level: “The stark reality in America... And they are going to continue to aim it until they no longer have to win elections.” ProPublica reporters Molly Redden and Andy Kroll—working in collaboration with Nick Surgery from Documented—released videos of a... Along the way, he also charts a strategy to put enforcement of immigration policy at the southern border of the country on a war footing, and declares holy vengeance against the “transgender sewage that’s... Screenshot via Centre for Climate Reporting Key Project 2025 leader Russ Vought explains to undercover reporters how the initiative’s draconian policies would be implemented in a second Trump term, disavows Trump’s distancing from Project 2025, and outlines the “second phase”... In an undercover interview with reporters from the British non-profit organization Centre for Climate Reporting, Project 2025 architect and MAGA ally Russ Vought admitted to the project's strong ties to former President Donald Trump...

Vought thought that he was meeting with relatives of wealthy potential donors; in reality, he was secretly being recorded in a Washington, D.C., hotel room. During the interview, Vought disavowed Trump’s distancing from Project 2025, candidly explained draconian policies he hopes Trump will implement in a second administration, praised Trump’s running mate JD Vance, and outlined the “second phase”... Vought, who is reportedly in line for a high-ranking position in a second Trump term, is a key architect of Project 2025 — the conservative movement’s extremist platform for a potential second Trump White... The project extensively outlines potential approaches to governance for the next would-be Republican president, including replacing federal employees with extremists and Trump loyalists and attacking LGBTQ rights, abortion, contraception, and labor unions. Project 2025 describes extreme policies like dismantling the federal agency that tracks hurricanes, upending Medicare as we know it, enacting inflationary tariff policies, and dramatically raising taxes on everyday Americans. We need a media that covers power, not covers for power.

Democracy Now!’s independent journalism has done exactly that for 30 years. Please donate today, so we can ensure that our daily news and extensive archive remain freely accessible for everyone. Every dollar makes a difference. Thank you so much! Democracy Now! Amy Goodman

We need a media that covers power, not covers for power. Democracy Now!’s independent journalism has done exactly that for 30 years. Please donate today, so we can ensure that our daily news and extensive archive remain freely accessible for everyone. Every dollar makes a difference. Thank you so much! Democracy Now!

Amy Goodman We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution. As Donald Trump tries to distance his campaign from Project 2025, those behind the right-wing policy blueprint to remake the U.S. government continue to brag in private about their close ties to the Republican presidential nominee and how they intend to push a radical right-wing agenda in a second Trump administration. In July, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought met with two people he believed to be relatives of a wealthy conservative donor interested in funding the effort.

In fact, he was meeting with two reporters with the U.K.-based Centre for Climate Reporting as part of an undercover sting captured on video. Over the course of two hours, Vought described Trump’s disavowal of Project 2025 as mere theater and laid out plans for mass deportations, restricting abortion, gutting independent government bureaucracies, using the military against racial... The secret plans are “designed to ensure that this kind of radical agenda that the conservative movement has in the U.S. can be implemented from day one,” says Lawrence Carter, founder and director of the Centre for Climate Reporting and one of the reporters who spoke with Vought. “They want to make sure that the mistakes from the first Trump administration, as they see them, where not much got done, are avoided this time around.” AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with a new undercover video that shows the co-author of Project 2025 bragging about his ties to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — even as Trump is trying...

While former President Donald Trump has repeatedly, publicly distanced himself from Project 2025 — a 900-page guidebook for Trump’s second term as President — one of the document’s co-authors was caught on a hidden... Russell Vought was the director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s administration, and he later ran the Center for Renewing America after Trump lost reelection. The organization played a large role in crafting Project 2025, along with several other right-wing groups. As the policy director for the Republican National Convention last month, Vought also helped to write the new GOP platform. In short, Vought is deeply involved in developing policy for the Republican party as well as Project 2025. The UK-based Centre for Climate Reporting constructed a ruse to catch Vought spilling insider information on Project 2025, requesting a meeting between him and two journalists who misrepresented themselves as relatives of “a reclusive...

During the July 24 meeting, Vought spoke candidly about the goals of Project 2025 and how much Trump had a hand in it. CNN reported: Vought said he had personally talked to Trump in recent months and received at least one personal “assignment” from him after he left office. He noted that the former president has “been at our organization, he’s raised money for our organization, he’s blessed it … he’s very supportive of what we do.” Donald Trump has tried to claim that he has no ties to Project 2025, the dystopian policy agenda authored by the Heritage Foundation that seeks to drastically reorganize and destroy large parts of the... However, a newly leaked video shows one of the plan’s key architects telling undercover journalists that Trump has helped raise money for his organization’s work and is “very supportive” of his right-wing agenda.

Project 2025 would have broad impacts on American culture, including drastic shifts in science and tech policy. Undercover journalists with the Centre for Climate Reporting recently used a sophisticated operation involving hidden cameras to capture a private conversation with Russell Vought, one of the leading minds behind Project 2025. Vought is also the President of the Center for Renewing America, a right-wing think-tank dedicated to turning “back the tide of progressive liberalism” in the U.S. In their conversation, the journalists got Vought to admit that, despite his public rhetoric, Trump still supports the Project 2025 policy agenda. “He’s been at our organization, he’s raised money for our organization, he’s blessed it,” Vought said, of Trump. He added that the former President is “very supportive of what we do,” despite Trump having distanced himself from Project 2025.

“I expect to hear ten more times…the President distancing himself from the left’s bogeyman of Project 2025—I’m not worried about that,” Vought said. Vought further claimed that his organization was quietly drafting hundreds of executive orders and legal memos that could be used by a future Trump administration. Midway through his first term in office, The Heritage Foundation bragged that 64 percent of its policy prescriptions were “included in Trump’s budget, implemented through regulatory guidance, or under consideration for action in accordance... “President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term,” a campaign spokesperson told CNN. This article originally appeared on Truthout. Hidden camera video featuring a key proponent of Project 2025 and a former Trump administration official details how the project is still very much alive and running, despite insistence from others that it was...

Project 2025 is a manifesto organized by The Heritage Foundation and dozens of other conservative groups that is meant to provide a framework for how Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, should reshape... Among its many “wish list” items, it calls for the rescinding of protections for LGBTQ people, the further deterioration of reproductive rights, the privatization of Medicare, the abolishment of the Department of Education and... The document also features ideals familiar to Christian nationalist and white supremacist movements, and at least five of its contributors have espoused the latter movement’s views in the past.

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