WASHINGTON – A growing list of conservative groups that had previously supported Project 2025 – which calls for the total criminalization of the production and distribution of adult content – have reportedly distanced themselves from the self-described “presidential transition” blueprint, following the Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he disagrees with an unspecified number of his positions.
Kevin Roberts, chairman of the Heritage Foundation, also tried to calm the public about the far-right wish list provided by the more than 900-page document, saying he likes to refer to the plan “as a sort of Cheesecake Factory menu.” .
“It’s all kinds of things that anyone would want to take on,” he added, speaking to reporters outside the Republican National Convention. “It is impossible for any individual conservative to agree with everything in the document.”
Investigative news website The Intercept reported Friday that they have identified seven conservative organizations “that have been removed from the advisory board’s membership list since Heritage first announced it two years ago.”
These now include libertarian groups Competitive Enterprise Institute and FreedomWorks, Stephen Miller’s America First Legal Foundation, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Discovery Institute, anti-abortion group Americans United for Life and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
In late March, Heritage added a disclaimer to the initiative’s web page, stating: “The opinions of Project 2025 and The Heritage Foundation do not necessarily represent the views of all of its advisory board partners.”
Trump repeats his rejection as previous full approval emerges
As XBIZ reported, Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 in recent weeks.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social earlier this month, Trump wrote: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I don’t agree with some of the things they say and some of the things they say are absolutely ridiculous and horrible. Whatever they do, I wish them the best of luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Given Trump’s documented history of spouting outright, easily debunked falsehoods, his implausible claim that he has “no idea who is behind Project 2025” surprised few commentators.
Also notable was the former president’s vagueness about exactly which Project 2025 proposals he disagreed with.
More recently, during a campaign appearance in Michigan on Saturday, Trump told the crowd: “You’ve got the radical left and the radical right and they’re coming out – I don’t know what it is. [They say] ‘It’s Project 25. He’s involved in the project’ [sic]. And then they read some things and they’re extreme, they’re seriously extreme. But I don’t know anything about it, I don’t want to know anything about it.”
The X account from Biden’s (now Harris) campaign headquarters quickly pulled up a keynote speech Trump gave to the Heritage Foundation earlier in his campaign, in which he told a different story.
“Our country is going to hell,” the recently appointed Republican presidential candidate told the Heritage audience during a keynote address in 2022. “The critical job of institutions like Heritage [is] to lay the foundation. And Heritage is doing a fantastic job there. They are going to lay the groundwork and lay out plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do, when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America, and that is coming.”
“We’ve already demonstrated the power of our winning formula, working closely with many of the great people at Heritage over the four incredible years we’ve been working closely with you, and we were just talking to Kevin about it,” Trump said. his close collaboration with Roberts. “They’re going to be working on some other things that are going to be really exciting, I think, Kevin, I think this might be the most exciting of them all.”
Project 2025’s blueprint document for a second Trump administration — which the group repeatedly claimed until this month was trying to recruit — states that pornography “does not claim First Amendment protection.”
“The suppliers are child predators and misogynistic exploiters,” continues the document – published last year and not disavowed by the Trump campaign until Roberts suggested in a June interview that he was ready for a potentially violent revolution. “Their product is as addictive as any illegal drug and psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be banned. The people who produce and distribute it should be jailed. Educators and public librarians who distribute this should be classified as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology companies that facilitate its spread should be shut down.”