Trump Said He Hadn T Read Project 2025 But Most Of His Cnn

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 28, 2025, 2:10 AM

trump said he hadn t read project 2025 but most of his cnn

President Donald Trump caught his own administration off guard last week by suggesting that the nation’s primary disaster response agency might simply “go away.” Though Trump had routinely lambasted the Federal Emergency Management Agency throughout his third White House bid, he had stopped short of calling for its elimination. Now, an executive order bearing his signature has put that possibility in motion. The idea, however, wasn’t new. The contours of it circulated nearly two years ago through Project 2025, a sweeping plan to overhaul the government that Trump as a candidate forcefully disavowed. Many of Trump’s early actions appear closely aligned with Project 2025’s plans.

A CNN analysis of the 53 executive orders and actions from Trump’s first week in office found that more than two-thirds – 36 – evoke proposals outlined in “Mandate for Leadership,” Project 2025’s 922-page... The overlap includes early steps taken by Trump to execute some of his most-touted pledges: cracking down on illegal immigration; dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and rolling back environmental restrictions on oil and... The 900-page Mandate for Leadership was seen by many as a Christian nationalist roadmap for the 47th president of the United States of America. While Trump distanced himself from it on the campaign trail, Alex Hannaford reports on how his executive orders are following it to the letter… The next conservative president “must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors,” reads page four of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership. To achieve this, it says, the president should begin by “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity, diversity, equity, and inclusion … abortion, reproductive health … out of every federal rule, agency regulation,...

On his first day on the job, Donald Trump signed an executive order “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”. Eight days later the Office of Personnel Management sent an email to the heads of various government agencies instructing them to strip “gender ideology” from websites, contracts and emails. Soon, entire pages had been excised from federal websites. It took Trump two weeks to issue more than 50 executive orders in what some saw as a ruthless spectacle of speed and malice. And despite saying he had never even read it, the majority of the directives were outlined in Project 2025, a political initiative prepared by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation. And should anyone still be under the illusion that this dystopian manifesto for the United States was nothing more than a fever dream, it is worth noting that the Senate moved to confirm Project...

Key Point: “Many of Trump’s early actions appear closely aligned with Project 2025’s plans. A CNN analysis of the 53 executive orders and actions from Trump’s first week in office found that more than two-thirds – 36 – evoke proposals outlined in ‘Mandate for Leadership,’ Project 2025’s 922-page... CNN: Trump said he hadn’t read Project 2025 – but most of his early executive actions overlap with its proposals Former President Donald Trump denied any connection to Project 2025, the handbook for a new conservative government written by the Heritage Foundation and several right-wing think tanks, in his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. "I have nothing to do with Project 2025," Trump said in the ABC News Presidential Debate.

"I haven't read it. I don't want to read it purposely. I'm not going to read it." Several key authors of the plan served in Trump's administration. Democrats have focused much of their messaging in the 2024 campaign on tying Trump directly to the document. Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm. Maybe it's time we took a minute to actually read this giant thing. At least 140 of the authors, editors, and contributors worked in President Trump's first administration. The New York Times said that Project 2025 detailed "extreme executive-branch overhauls," including "plans for criminalizing pornography, disbanding the Commerce and Education departments, rejecting the idea of abortion as health care, and shredding climate... According to an NBC News Poll from September 2024, Project 2025 was extremely unpopular with voters, with 57% of registered voters reporting feeling negative toward it and just 4% viewing the conservative policy plan...

Out of all the subjects tested in that same NBC News poll, it was the least popular — and the poll included socialism, capitalism, both presidential and vice presidential candidates, and even Taylor Swift... President Donald Trump made clear during his campaign that he wanted little to do with Project 2025, the sweeping and controversial conservative policy blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation. But just days into his second term, many of Trump’s early actions align with the Project 2025 agenda. An analysis by TIME found that nearly two-thirds of the executive actions Trump has issued so far mirror or partially mirror proposals from the 900-page document, ranging from sweeping deregulation measures to aggressive immigration... Democrats had seized on Trump’s connection to Project 2025 during the campaign, pointing out that many of the playbook’s contributors previously worked for Trump or had connections to his orbit. Trump repeatedly said he had “no idea who is behind” the conservative blueprint and that some of its ideas were “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” He appeared to soften his stance after winning the election,...

Despite Trump’s past disavowals, many of the individuals involved in drafting Project 2025, such as Russell Vought and Brendan Carr, have been tapped to serve in prominent positions in his Administration. Vought was nominated to run the Office of Management and Budget, while Carr was tapped to lead the Federal Communications Commission. The Heritage Foundation declined to comment for this story. A White House spokesperson tells TIME that Trump “had nothing to do with Project 2025” and that his first raft of executive orders “delivered on the promises that earned him a resounding mandate from... During the 2024 election, President Donald Trump ran away from any association with Project 2025, the controversial Heritage Foundation policy list that called for a right-wing ideological takeover of the civil service and federal... But now he is in office, an analysis by Time Magazine reveals around 2 in 3 of his executive orders are at least partially inspired by Project 2025.

"When Project 2025 was published in April 2023, it was designed as a roadmap for a future Republican presidential administration, with the goal of reshaping the federal government in ways that align with conservative,... "The initiative's agenda includes aggressive deregulation, curbs on immigration, challenges to civil-rights protections, and a substantial reduction of the federal workforce, all with the aim of reducing the size and scope of government while... ALSO READ: Inside the parade of right-wing world leaders flocking to D.C. for Trump's inauguration Not all of Trump's executive orders this week involve ideas from the 900-page policy project, one of the most notable being Trump's order to revoke birthright citizenship from the Fourteenth Amendment — a wildly... President-elect Donald Trump discusses the conservative policy blueprint “Project 2025,” during an exclusive interview with Meet the Press.

Trump Said He Hadn T Read Project 2025 But Most Of His Cnn

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