Former President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he supports parts of Project 2025, the far-right agenda authored by a slew of his former staffers under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation.

During a typically sycophantic phone interview, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Trump to respond to Democrats who “keep on tying you to Project 2025” and to give his opinion of the proposal itself. The former president responded by claiming both that he knows “nothing” about the nearly 900-page document and that he supports elements of it.

Donald Trump on Project 2025: “Many of the points are fine. Many of the points are absolutely ridiculous... I have never seen the document.”

“They wrote something that I disagree with in many cases and some cases you agree... This is a document I know nothing about.”

SO he… pic.twitter.com/Yyw76wb92L

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 25, 2024

No one on Fox & Friends bothered to try to get Trump to reveal which parts of Project 2025 he thinks are “fine” and which parts he finds “absolutely ridiculous.” That’s not surprising — Fox in its current form shies away from discussing the unpopular elements of the GOP agenda in favor of providing propaganda to help Trump and his allies gain power so they can execute those policies.

But news outlets not dedicated to Trump’s political success owe it to their audiences to try to get Trump to identify which parts of Project 2025 he is willing to publicly support.

That extremist blueprint includes:

• Reimplementing “Schedule F,” a Trump-era executive order that removes civil service protection for career federal workers so they can be replaced with far-right loyalists.

• Adopting extreme anti-choice policies that would restrict legal abortion drugs and emergency contraception, and potentially targeting fertility-related health care like IVF and surrogacy services.

• Undermining checks and balances in the federal government and consolidating the president’s power to weaponize the Department of Justice and law enforcement against his political enemies.

• Raising taxes on middle-class Americans while allowing high-income earners to more easily cheat the IRS.

• Upending Medicare by pushing seniors onto privately run Medicare Advantage plans instead of traditional Medicare. 

• Shredding federal protections for LGBTQ people and expelling transgender service members from the military.

• Eviscerating labor rights, including union negotiating rights and protections for overtime pay.

• Gutting enforcement of federal environmental protections and slashing funding for clean energy.

• Overhauling the American education system by eliminating the Department of Education and making student loans more expensive.

It’s unsurprising that Trump and his cronies would try to create some distance from that toxic document. But former Trump aides oversaw and authored the bulk of Project 2025; Trump previously celebrated implementing Heritage’s policy recommendations during his presidency and gushed over its “incredible” president, Kevin Roberts; and Heritage has bragged about its influence over him, while Roberts touted how the conservative movement had “unified” behind Project 2025 and authored a book featuring a foreword written by Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. 

There was little plausible daylight between Trump and Project 2025 — and now the Republican presidential nominee has opened the door to questions about which parts of the extremist agenda he supports.