The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman on Monday told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins how a longtime fear of Donald Trump’s aides now appears to be raising its head before the 2024 election.
The former president has in recent weeks been increasingly linked to the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a playbook containing extreme policy proposals that have been crafted by multiple former Trump White House staffers. President Joe Biden’s campaign has repeatedly seized on the document to attack Trump and warn of the consequences of a potential second Trump administration.
Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, at the weekend sought to downplay his connection to the agenda, a move slammed by MSNBC’s Ali Velshi as “complete and utter B.S.”
Haberman on Monday claimed to Collins that Project 2025 is “not actually a Trump effort” and that his aides “have actually been very frustrated by a lot of” its efforts.
“It is true that some key Trump advisers are involved in Project 2025,” she acknowledged. “It is true that some of those people would almost certainly staff another Trump administration. But there’s a lot of what is in that document that you’ve never heard Trump talk about that I don’t think that he would actually be interested in.”
Trump’s distancing statement will now “be reflected on in most stories going forward about the project,” she predicted.
It’s turned it into “a bigger deal,” she said. “So, this is exactly what Trump’s advisers had been concerned about for some time. Is this statement going to make this go away? It doesn’t really seem like it.”
