With all the focus in recent weeks on President Joe Biden’s age-related limitations, it’s worth remembering that Donald Trump’s incessant falsehoods and self-proclaimed desire to be a dictator on Day 1 make him far more unfit for the presidency. The latest Trump lie that should be garnering more attention is his attempt to distance himself from Project 2025: “I know nothing about Project 2025,” he posted on Truth Social last week. “I have no idea who is behind it.” That statement is demonstrably false. It reflects an attempt to deceive American voters about the dictatorship a second Trump term would bring.
The reasons that Trump is unfit are manifest. He is a convicted felon and inveterate liar who coddles the nation’s adversaries and threatens its allies. His 30-plus falsehoods in the debate were no less disqualifying than Biden’s age. But most concerning of all are his plans for autocracy, which we document in our American Autocracy Threat Tracker. We detail Trump’s own promise to be a dictator “on Day 1” of his presidency, to “terminate” or reject the Constitution, and to stretch the law to carry out his extreme policies—such as mass deportations (by military force if necessary) and concentration camps for immigrants lacking permanent legal status.
Dictatorship cannot of course be accomplished by one person alone. That’s why, in our Threat Tracker, we also document the autocratic proposals made by Trump’s campaign, allies, and enablers. First among them—and until now embraced by Trump—are the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025, an 887-page document that outlines how Trump could arrogate unprecedented power in the presidency and eradicate checks on presidential control. In our tracker, we catalog how Project 2025 “proposes to dismantle or radically overhaul the Departments of Justice and State; eliminate the Departments of Homeland Security, Education, and Commerce; radically repurpose other agencies; and eviscerate the professional civil service.” One “immediate priority” discussed by leaders of Project 2025 are proposals for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to suppress domestic dissent and violence.
That plan exemplifies the danger lurking beneath this extreme project, as hinted at by last week’s discussion of bloodshed. The president of the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025’s parent organization, Kevin Roberts, said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” The Heritage Foundation subsequently quote-tweeted this clip with one word: “Yes.”
Contrary to Trump’s disavowal, Project 2025 has been conceived, staffed, and endorsed by a plethora of Trump insiders—including some of the former president’s most senior and influential advisers. Notably, John McEntee, a powerful figure in the Trump administration as the director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, is a senior adviser to the effort and has helped spearhead its lists of potential Trump administration staffers. And Stephen Miller, a top Trump aide, is “one of the most powerful architects” of Project 2025, Axios has reported.
The list of Trump-affiliated figures who have played a role in Project 2025 does not stop there. It also includes Ben Carson, Trump’s ex–secretary of housing and urban development; Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser under Trump; and Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump. Vought is yet another central player in the former president’s orbit: He drafted a key chapter in Project 2025 and is now the policy director for the committee writing the Republican National Committee’s policy platform. And there are many other lower-profile Trump advisers involved in Project 2025, as we discuss in our Threat Tracker.
Meanwhile, Trump’s super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., has been running ads promoting a website called Trump Project 2025. And figures like Miller and Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt have previously appeared in online advertisements promoting Project 2025.
Because of this, Project 2025 is Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is Project 2025. Whether or not Roberts’ chilling comment spurred Trump’s social media post trying to separate himself from it, it is simply false. And if Trump will lie about that, on top of thousands of other documented lies, we cannot accept the remainder of his purported disavowal: “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
This kind of gaslighting is “one of the oldest dictator tricks,” as Ruth Ben-Ghiat, one of the co-editors of the Threat Tracker, has documented in her scholarship. “‘Dictators sometimes pretend not to know what is happening so they can blame their officials for the destruction and keep their personality cults in good shape.”
Of all Trump’s recent lies, his attempted dissociation with Project 2025 may be the most important—because he’s trying to convince the American people that the choice between dictatorship and democracy that they face is not before them at all. That, and not just Joe Biden’s (genuine) challenges, should be the issue dominating public discourse. If Biden is reelected, we’ll get an aging yet good-hearted and law-abiding man who has demonstrated stellar performance as president. It is still up to Biden to prove that he has the stamina and competence to remain in the race.
But with Donald Trump, you get a self-proclaimed dictator who, taking a page from the book of strongmen everywhere, now wants to fool you about his autocratic proclivities to secure office.
