Kaitlan Collins and Isaac Arnsdorf explain why the Trump campaign can't fully distance itself from Project 2025
Isaac Arnsdorf: “And so some of what is going on here is trying to have a reset, trying to make -- smooth this over with the campaign”
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From the July 30, 2024, edition of CNN's The Source with Kaitlan Collins
KAITLAN COLLINS (HOST): Tonight, the director of Project 2025 has stepped down after facing criticism from both Democrats and the Trump campaign. Paul Dans helmed the right-wing policy blueprint and personnel project, which was backed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, and if it was enacted, it would dramatically reshape how the federal government operates. At least 140 former Trump administration officials contributed to this project and many of its proposals overlap with Trump's plans for a second term. But the former president has both criticized and distanced himself from it I don't know what the hell it is.
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Now, I should note the Trump campaign appeared to cheer Paul Dans' departure tonight, even though he is an alum of the Trump administration who served in the OPM office saying in a quote, "Its demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign. It will not end well for you."
I should note, Paul Dans was supposed to join me on this show tonight -- we hope that he will soon -- but he unfortunately canceled our interview within the last hour.
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COLLINS: Can you just lay out a breakdown for people who have heard about Project 2025, but also just heard what Trump said on what this relationship and in what Project 25 was actually doing?
ISAAC ARNSDORF (GUEST): Project 2025 started before Trump was the nominee, before it was clear that he was going to be the nominee. And the idea was for the Heritage Foundation to get together a whole bunch of think tanks in the conservative movement and present a consensus view for an agency by agency policy, blueprint for the next administration, whoever that Republican president was going to be.
Now, obviously, and there were actually some concerns that the president of the Heritage Foundation was too close to Florida governor Ron Desantis for a while and that could be an issue but obviously, as it became clear that Trump was going to be the nominee, and so many of the contributors to this to this, to this project were alumni of the Trump White House and the Trump administration and would naturally be the kinds of people who Trump would look to, to staff the next administration. If he does win.
And so that's why when the Trump campaign has not been super specific about the details of what he would implement in a second term, naturally, a lot of people look at his staff, his former staff, and the ideas that were being presented to kind of fill in those blanks and get a clearer sense of what would look like. And then when the campaign saw that they didn't want to own the things that were ended up being controversial.
COLLINS: But it's remarkable because a lot of this was, as you noted, done by people who worked for Trump, a lot of the proposals when you look at them are things that the people in Trump's campaign have actually proposed and suggested would happen if he did win a second term. So I think it's remarkable to see such a conservative group that Trump has praised the leader of the Heritage Foundation and to now see his campaign cheering the departure of the leader of this, of this specific project.
ARNSDORF: Well, right. A lot of people at Heritage and involved in Project 2025, loved the notoriety that it was getting. They loved to see it being criticized on CNN and MSNBC. They loved that there were DNC mobile billboard trucks outside the office but then when it started angering Trump and they started getting backlash from Trump about it, that made them really concerned.
And so some of what is going on here is trying to have a reset, trying to make -- smooth this over with the campaign, tried to get out of the spotlight, offer up Paul Dans as a little bit of a sacrificial lamb and maybe we can just try to smooth this over
And publicly the campaign is happy to take that W, if it means that Project 2025 stops causing political problems for them. The thing is, I don't expect the Democrats to stop talking about it anytime soon.