For it to be a conspiracy, the number of items the Trump administration has completed is amazing.
I wouldn't call the claims about Project 2025 a "conspiracy" exactly, but a bunch of people definitely did exaggerate what it said or just plain made claims that weren't even true when trying to attack Trump with it. One can find more commonality between Trump's policies and Project 2025 when one is comparing the actual content of Project 2025 rather than the exaggerations.
However, the idea that Project 2025 (actual Project 2025 or exaggerated version) was some kind of secret blueprint for Trump has problems with it. Project 2025 was a manifesto by a Republican-aligned group (the Heritage Foundation) and Trump, guess what, is a Republican. One can find a bunch of commonality between the Green Party platform and stuff Biden did, it doesn't mean Biden was following the ideas of the Green Party, it just means that because they're both liberals you're going to find some crossover.
As is well explained here (this was from much earlier this year, but the general points still hold up), footnotes omitted:
A Trump hot takes megapost. (Once. As a treat.)
decivitate.jamesjheaney.com
...
many point out that Project 2025 suggested things that President de facto Trump later commanded through executive order—often using language that closely echoes language from Project 2025—so we are already living in a Project 2025 regime (and it sucks!). Hence Politico’s “37 ways Project 2025 has shown up in Trump’s executive orders.” These articles are used to vindicate last year’s conspiracy theory that, despite Donald Trump’s repeated repudiation of Project 2025, Project 2025 was nevertheless the secret blueprint of his administration. (I wrote about these and other P2025-related conspiracy theories last year.) Yet the presumption of all these articles is that, if Project 2025 suggested doing something and Trump subsequently did it, Project 2025 must be where the idea originated. That’s not remotely the case.
In fact, for some ideas, it’s exactly the opposite: the first Trump Administration had an idea, then Project 2025 adopted it into their framework! Even though Trump later did these things, he obviously didn’t get the idea from Project 2025. In most cases (like DEI rollbacks), he actively ran on these ideas, and the American people voted for it.
For many ideas, Trump and Project 2025 were both drawing on long-standing conservative commitments. For example, it is true, as Politico alleges in a scandalized tone, that Project 2025 recommended Trump impose the Mexico City Policy to block U.S. subsidies for international abortion providers… and Trump did! However, it’s perfectly obvious Trump didn’t do it because Project 2025 suggested it; he also imposed the Mexico City Policy at the start of his first term… and so has every other incoming Republican president since Ronald Reagan. This is just something Republican presidents do. Treating this as proof that Donald Trump is secretly following Project 2025 is just as silly as treating it as proof that George H.W. Bush was secretly following Project 2025 more than thirty years before Project 2025 was written!
This gives us a fairly simple heuristic you can use to see whether it’s even plausible that Trump got one of his ideas from Project 2025:
- Did he do it in his last term, before Project 2025 existed? If yes, then it obviously didn’t come from Project 2025.
- Did he actively campaign on it in 2024, the same campaign where he repudiated Project 2025? If yes, then it obviously wasn’t a secret he foisted on an unsuspecting public, and he probably didn’t get the idea from Project 2025 at all!
When you go through the 37 executive orders Politico cites as “evidence” that Trump was lying on the campaign trail, this simple heuristic eliminates 35 of them.
What’s left? What Trump policy proposals may have actually originated from Project 2025? Spicy stuff, believe you me:
- Closing the OFCCP (Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs)
- I doubt President Trump knew then, nor knows now, what OFCCP is. It’s an anti-discrimination enforcement office, so it was in trouble no matter what, but it’s plausible that the idea to close it came from P2025.
- Shifting FEMA burdens to the states, with FEMA playing only a support role
- Note that Trump already hated FEMA, and it’s easy to imagine Trump asking the office, “Hey, how can I crush FEMA under my heel,” and a P2025 staffer saying, “You know, I wrote down some ideas about that.”
I did always say that, since Project 2025 is very much a part of the (very small) conservative policy wonk world, it was inevitable that Project 2025 would have some influence in the Trump White House, as one faction among many. These data points seem to bear that out.
The democratic process was not bypassed to promote Harris. The DNC followed their policies to elect someone at the last minute. The DNC electors had people who submitted their intent to run with the required signatures and they were voted on. Not everyone voted for Harris via a virtual roll call. She was also not the only one with delegates, but the others did not have enough to win.
People were expecting a 50 state primary all over again. That's not what happens. There was also not time for it as deadlines had passed in all the states and my state of Ohio was threatening not to have the dem candidate on the ballot at all if not submitted by a certain date. They were unwilling to provide exceptions granted to candidates in the past, including GOP candidates.
See Adoption of early virtual nomination vote here.
en.wikipedia.org
The GOP would have had to do something similar had they lost their nominee at the last minute.
The Democratic process (or, at least, the primary process) was bypassed to promote Harris. It might have been unavoidable to not bypass at that point (there was absolutely no time to do primaries), but it was still bypassed.
I do think that, with the hand the Democrats were dealt with Biden dropping out, quickly rallying around Harris was the decision that made the most sense. There was no time for a primary, they didn't want the convention to get taken over by arguments over who the delegates should vote for (especially because the convention wasn't planned to be a contested convention), and it made the most sense to rally around the person who was the Vice President. In hindsight we can see that didn't work out, so maybe it would've been better to do it differently... but with the information available at the time, and the situation they were in, I think quickly rallying around Harris was the best decision.
Of course, while I said "it might have been unavoidable to not bypass at that point" we should put emphasis on the words "at that point". Because if Biden hadn't run for re-election, they could've had a real primary (they technically had a primary but as is normal for a sitting President, Biden was so strongly favored they might as well not have). I can definitely see frustration for being told endlessly "Biden's actually totally fine, ignore all claims that he isn't! No need for any real primary!" only to then later on be told "okay, Biden actually isn't in that great of a shape, but there's no time for a primary now, so it's Harris whether you like it or not."
