What Trump has said about Project 2025 over the years: A timeline

As a 2024 presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025, a plan by the conservative nonprofit the Heritage Foundation to overhaul the federal government, claiming he knew nothing about the initiative.

Less than a year into his second presidential term, however, his presidential administration has embraced many of Project 2025’s core ideas — advancing policies that align with its recommendations on immigration, education, fossil fuels and more.

Below, we outline what Trump has said about Project 2025 over time, both as a presidential candidate and the country’s commander in chief. He’s gone from denying any involvement in the initiative to promoting his connection to one of its key authors in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform.

No federal document, including executive orders, cite Project 2025, despite the fact that several Trump-sponsored measures align with the Heritage Foundation proposal. 

We reached out to the Trump administration to see if it had anything else to say about Project 2025 and its influence on the president’s agenda as of December 2025, but did not hear back.

In mid-December 2025, the Heritage Foundation sent an email to members that said it was planning to “work with the Trump administration” to enact its latest set of proposals.

Before Trump’s second presidential term

Prior to the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump publicly signaled support for work by the Heritage Foundation that would later become Project 2025. In an April 2022 speech at the Heritage Foundation’s Annual Leadership Conference in Florida, he said the nonprofit was laying the “groundwork and [detailing] plans for exactly what our movement will do,” apparently in reference to his future presidential campaign, “when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

Years later, during Trump’s presidential campaign and after the Heritage Foundation officially unveiled Project 2025, his political opponents speculated he was working with the nonprofit on the effort behind the scenes, allegedly without publicly disclosing the partnership. In response, Trump wrote in a July 2024 post on Truth Social: 

I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. 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.

Similarly, during a September 2024 presidential debate with former Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump stated, “I have nothing to do with Project 2025.” Of the roughly 1,000-page document and its authors, he said:

I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it purposely. I’m not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together. They came up with some ideas — I guess, some good, some bad — but it makes no difference.

Weeks later, the question of whether Trump was quietly working with Project 2025 leaders resurfaced as he eyed prospective cabinet members with ties to the initiative, such as Russell Vought and Tom Homan.

Asked again in November 2024 about ties between Trump and Project 2025, the White House reiterated that he had no connection to the initiative. “President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” said then-transition team spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a statement to The Associated Press. “All of President Trumps’ cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.”

After the 2024 presidential election

After winning the presidential election in November 2024, Trump continued insisting he had no connection to Project 2025.

However, within his first few days in the White House, he issued a series of executive orders — including ones to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and ban transgender people in the military — that aligned with the initiative’s proposals.

In late January 2025, an unnamed White House spokesperson reiterated Trump’s comments on the campaign trail in an interview with TIME, stating he “had nothing to do with Project 2025.” The spokesperson described his first series of executive orders as delivering on “promises that earned him a resounding mandate from the American people,” apparently in reference to the 2024 election.

Some overlap between the Trump administration’s agenda and Project 2025 continued in the following months, like with the reinstatement of Schedule F, an executive action that recategorizes federal workers’ job titles to make firing and hiring easier, and the rollback of Biden-era environmental policies. When reporters again asked the Trump administration if it was using the Heritage Foundation’s plan to make policy decisions, the office said no. 

As of this writing, the president has not cited Project 2025 in his work.

As president, Trump has made just one public statement mentioning Project 2025, as of this writing. On Oct. 2, 2025, he referenced a key architect of Project 2025 and the current director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Russ Vought, in a Truth Social post (archived here) (emphasis ours): 

I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.

(TruthSocial account @realDonaldTrump)

Multiple news outlets interpreted that post as concrete evidence of Trump supporting the initiative. The Associated Press wrote, “Trump is openly embracing the conservative blueprint he desperately tried to distance himself from during the 2024 campaign” and the Truth Social post represented a “dramatic about-face” for the president.

Vought is among several Project 2025 leaders who are now part of, or working closely with, the Trump administration. 

Sources