The former head of Project 2025, Paul Dans, bragged about the initiative’s extreme policies and criticized both the Trump campaign and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in interviews with CNN and The New York Times, his first since resigning from his post. Dans used the opportunity to mislead about the content of Project 2025, in particular the plans to replace scores of federal workers with MAGA acolytes.

Dans took swipes at Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles for the campaign’s disavowals of Project 2025 and blamed them for the hair splittingly close race. He told The New York Times, “Trump should be running like Secretariat at the Belmont, but instead it’s a race to the wire,” and reportedly advocated for the pair to be replaced.

On CNN, Dans appeared to expand his criticism to include Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts (though he didn’t use his name).

“Certainly there were some remarks by people at Heritage that I would — I fully renounce,” he said, “Any kind of, you know, talking about the second American revolution or bloodlessness. we have to lower the temperature in this country.” Dans appears to be referring to Roberts’ viral remarks from July, in which he said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Dans has effusively praised former President Donald Trump in the past and bragged about the former president’s cozy relationship with Project 2025.

• In an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room, Dans called Project 2025 an “instruction manual” for the second Trump administration and referred to himself as a “forever Trumper."

• In an unearthed video, Dans claimed on a right-wing podcast that Project 2025 has a “great” relationship with Trump and that “Trump's very bought in” to the Project 2025 proposals.

• In an interview with the Australian Financial Review, Dans claimed Trump “will adopt many” of Project 2025’s policy proposals if he wins a second term.

Project 2025’s connection to Trump is not limited to Dans.

• At least 140 former Trump staff members worked on Project 2025’s policy proposals and staffing and training initiatives, and nearly 240 individuals have close ties to both Trump and Project 2025 according to CNN.

• Former Trump appointee Russ Vought claimed Trump was only distancing himself from Project 2025 for the public and stated, “He’s very supportive of what we do.”

• Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who previously claimed Project 2025 has “nothing to do with our campaign,” appeared in a Project 2025 video as part of their training initiatives.

• Former senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller also appeared in a Project 2025 recruitment video, and his organization, American First Legal, is referenced in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership at least 14 times. Miller has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming, “I have zero involvement with Project 2025. Zero. None."

• Republican National Committee co-chair and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump claimed Project 2025 has “some ideas in there that are very productive and will be great for this country.”

• Kevin Roberts said Trump’s goal is “very connected to the aims of Project 2025.”

• Roberts claimed staff from both Trump’s campaign and Heritage “have been in conversation throughout the campaign.”

• Roberts also asserted that “the overlap is tremendous” between the Trump agenda and Project 2025.”

• Trump himself has also repeatedly embraced Roberts and Heritage.

Dans told CNN host Kaitlan Collins, “The ideas within Project 2025, I think they’re pretty solid.” In fact, Project 2025’s policy proposals are both extreme and deeply unpopular. Here is a sampling of the ideas Dans is referring to:

• Adopting an extreme anti-choice agenda that would restrict legal abortion drugs and emergency contraception, and that could also impact 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.

• Institutionalizing the right-wing movement’s war on LGBTQ communities by promoting conversion therapy and stripping queer people of federal protections.

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

• Allowing high-income earners to more easily cheat the IRS.

• Rejecting climate science in favor of Big Oil’s preferred policies by gutting federal agencies that protect the environment and dismantling regulations allowing polluting industries to extract even more oil and gas from federal lands with less protections.

• Potentially conducting mass deportations of millions of immigrants or those suspected to be immigrants, in part by revoking all Temporary Protected Status designations, which would put more than 863,000 people at risk.

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

• Purging the federal government of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

• Expelling transgender service members from the military and eliminating DEI initiatives from the military to “restore standards of lethality and excellence.”

Dans also misled CNN viewers on Project 2025’s plans to gut the federal bureaucracy. “I mean, what Project 2025 really is: It's not a threat to democracy, it’s a threat to bureaucracy,” he told Collins. “It's putting the American — we the people — back into our government."

In reality, Project 2025 aims to replace politically neutral bureaucrats with far-right Trump loyalists through the reimplementation of a Trump-era executive order known as “Schedule F.” Schedule F would remove employment protections for up to 50,000 federal employees, allowing them to be fired.

Project 2025 has prepared for a future Republican administration to execute these firings quickly with the creation of a personnel database that has been referred to as the “conservative LinkedIn.” The initiative has been soliciting resumes for potential staffers and reportedly screening applicants through questions that drill down “more on political philosophy than on experience, education or other credentials,” according to Axios.

Additionally, ProPublica obtained and reported on training videos for potential hires produced by Project 2025, finding that “some of the content is routine advice that any incoming political appointee might be told. Other segments of the training offer guidance on radically changing how the federal government works and what it does."

Dans has also said he’s recruited audience members of Steve Bannon’s War Room to serve as bureaucrats in the next Trump administration.

Given Project 2025’s focus on remaking key parts of the executive branch into Trump’s main political weapon to enact a retribution agenda, Dans’ comment about Project 2025 being a “threat to bureaucracy” is anything but reassuring.