Trump again denies he’s linked to Project 2025 during Harris debate – but fact-checkers disagree
Donald Trump denies links to Project 2025 during presidential debate (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Former president Donald Trump has denied links to Project 2025 during the presidential debate with vice president Kamala Harris on Tuesday (10 September) – but fact-checkers say that claim is “misleading.”
Project 2025 is a now-infamous proposed manifesto published by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, which puts forward a detailed blueprint for the next Republican president, promoting right-wing policies including threatening LGBTQ+ rights, limiting access to abortion, and finishing building the wall on the US and Mexico border.
Harris described the 922-page agenda, which is not formally linked to Donald Trump’s campaign, as “dangerous” during Tuesday’s debate, claiming Trump “intends on implementing” the manifesto if he is re-elected in November.
Hitting back, Trump claimed that he has “nothing to do with Project 2025”, adding that the agenda could contain “some good” and “some bad” ideas.
“I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposefully. I’m not going to read it,” Trump said in response to claims he is linked with the project.
Former Trump administration officials have contributed to Project 2025
Fact-checkers for CBS News later described Trump’s claims as “misleading”. The news organisation explained that former Trump administration officials had contributed to Project 2025, and that several of its proposals matched Trump’s past policies and campaign promises.
Former Project 2025 director Paul Dans also denied Trump’s links to the manifesto, claiming the former president had not yet announced his intention to run when much of it was written, telling CNN it was “more of a DeSantis Project 2025”, as some at Heritage had worked with controversial Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
When asked why Trump’s name was mentioned in Project 2025 “300 times”, Dans simply said “he’s the former president.”
Elsewhere in Tuesday’s debate, Donald Trump claimed Kamala Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison”. He also made the bizarre claim that vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz believes “abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth is execution – no longer abortion because the baby is born OK, and that’s not OK with me”.
Strangest of all, Trump claimed that immigrants in the town of Springfield, Ohio are “eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats… They’re eating… they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
ABC’s debate moderator David Muir responded, saying they had reached out to Springfield’s city manager, who said there were “no credible reports” of this happening.
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