During the key presidential debate on ABC News on Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris criticized former President Donald Trump for his involvement in Project 2025, a 922-page handbook of controversial policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation designed to guide the next conservative administration.
Trump denied being involved in Project 2025, saying he had “nothing to do with it” and had not read it, even though the script was written by dozens of former members of his administration, including former Cabinet secretaries and West Wing staffers. At a Heritage event in April 2022, Trump said, “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and lay out plans for exactly what our movement is going to do… when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump participate in a presidential debate in Philadelphia on September 10, 2024.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
In the debate, Trump said: “I have nothing to do with Project 2025, she knows that better than anyone. It exists there. I have not read it. I deliberately do not want to read it. I will not read it,” he said.
He attributed the 2025 project to a “group of people coming together.”
“They had some ideas, I guess, some good, some bad,” he said. “But it makes no difference. I have nothing to do. Everyone knows I’m an open book.”
Linking Trump to Project 2025 has been a key part of Harris’ campaign strategy, and she has done so several times during this debate. Polls have consistently shown that the plan and its proposals are widely unpopular, so it’s no surprise that Trump is distancing himself from it again.
