Project 2025
Molly Butler / Media Matters

Research/Study Research/Study

As key Trump allies advocate for revenge, Project 2025 provides a policy framework to attack the media

Former Trump national security adviser Kash Patel: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media”

Written by Jack Winstanley

Published

Project 2025, a comprehensive transition plan organized by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation to staff the next GOP administration with extremists and implement a far-reaching right-wing agenda, proposes that a second Trump presidency should gut funding for public broadcasting and “reexamine” the relationship between the White House and reporters. These policy proposals laying the framework for the next Republican administration to attack the media are especially notable as former President Donald Trump and his allies have a long history of hostility toward the press, including during the 2024 presidential campaign, and some of Trump’s key allies have openly threatened retaliation against specific journalists and outlets if he is reelected. 

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  • Project 2025 attacks public broadcasting and suggests a future administration “reexamine” the relationship with the White House press corps, following years of Trump and his allies attacking the media

    • Project 2025 demands to end public funding for NPR, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Project 2025 describes NPR and other public media organizations as “tyrannical,” “leftist broadcasters,” complains that PBS airs “educational endeavors such as ‘Sesame Street’ … that are themselves biased to the Left,” and describes the elimination of federal funding for such outlets as “good policy and good politics.” Noting that “every Republican President since Richard Nixon has tried to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) of taxpayer funding,” the group’s policy book, titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, claims that this “means that the next conservative President must finally get this done and do it despite opposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary.” [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023]
    • Project 2025’s calls to pull funding from public broadcasters echo years of conservative attacks on NPR, PBS, and other public media organizations. A 2017 budget proposal from the Trump administration included a proposal to completely defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez, who authored a chapter in Mandate for Leadership advising a future Republican administration on how to defund “woke” public broadcasters, has been calling on Congress to defund those outlets since at least 2017. [Media Matters, 5/8/24, 4/26/24, 3/24/17]
    • Project 2025 also encourages a potential Trump administration to “reexamine” its relationship with media outlets and organizations, including the White House Correspondents Association, and suggests that reporters should not have a “permanent space” in the White House. The policy book states, “No legal entitlement exists for the provision of permanent space for media on the White House campus, and the next Administration should reexamine the balance between media demands and space constraints on the White House premises.” The document also suggests that a future Republican administration “should examine the nature of the relationship between itself and the White House Correspondents Association and consider whether an alternative coordinating body might be more suitable.” [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; White House Correspondents Association, accessed 8/20/24]
    • Trump and his campaign have deep ties to Project 2025, with a CNN analysis identifying nearly 240 people involved in Project 2025 who worked in either the Trump campaign or his first administration. Several individuals associated with Project 2025 have also spoken about their connections to Trump and his campaign, with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts stating that Trump's staff and Project 2025 “have been in conversation throughout the campaign on the matters of policy.” [Media Matters, 8/15/24, 7/11/24, 4/24/24, 3/20/24; CNN, 7/11/24]

  • Trump and his allies, including Project 2025 affiliates, have continued their hostile posture during the 2024 presidential campaign season

    • Trump’s presidential term was marked by repeated clashes with the press, including calling the press the “enemy of the people” in a 2019 social media post, with Trump continuing to attack the press after leaving office. A 2020 analysis by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker found that Trump made at least 2,000 social media posts attacking the press and specific reporting. Trump also became the first president to not attend the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, claiming that the reporters in attendance were “too negative.” During at least two rallies held during the 2022 midterm campaign season, Trump openly discussed jailing reporters and fantasized about using the threat of imprisonment and rape to force journalists to reveal the identity of sources. [U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, 4/12/20; The Hill, 4/5/19, 4/5/19; Rolling Stone, 10/23/22, 11/8/22]
    • Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign has denied press credentials to outlets and journalists that have reported critically on the former president. While in office, Trump revoked press passes for dozens of journalists, and his 2020 reelection campaign continued the pattern of denying credentials. Reporters from HuffPost, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, and Spectrum News have stated that their press access to Trump’s 2024 campaign events has been revoked, assumedly over prior unflattering coverage. [Vanity Fair, 4/19/24; Media Matters, 4/22/24; Twitter/X, 8/15/24, 8/14/24, 8/15/24; Columbia Journalism Review, 5/9/19; The Washington Post, 12/2/19] 
    • Taking issue with a recent report from The New York Times questioning Trump’s claim that he survived a helicopter crash landing with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, the former president attacked the paper and journalist Maggie Haberman for their “Fake & Fraudulent writing on the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX.” Trump reportedly called the newspaper and demanded an apology after it debunked his story (which Brown has also denied) and “used ‘a sing-song voice’ to mock the Times’ request for the helicopter flight records.” [HuffPost, 8/10/24]
    • On several occasions Trump has even lashed out against Fox News — an outlet that has consistently praised the former president — for coverage that he has taken issue with. In one social media post, Trump shared several paragraphs from a Fox News article discussing his Georgia polling lead over Joe Biden but edited out other paragraphs that discussed the current president’s “overwhelming support from liberals, Black voters, voters with college degrees, and suburban women and the reality that voters are split on issues related to health care, election integrity, and abortion, while Biden overwhelmingly comes out on top with voters on the topic of climate change.” In another social media post, Trump ripped Fox News for discussing polling data that showed him losing to Vice President Kamala Harris and for airing footage from her campaign rallies. [The New Republic, 2/16/24; The Hill, 7/9/24; Newsweek, 7/29/24]
    • Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and the principal architect of Project 2025, attacked the “deceitful ‘journalism’” covering the Trump 2024 campaign. In a separate post, Roberts accused Harris of “dodging tough questions, and the so-called ‘Professional Journalists’ are just fine with it?! It’s a disgrace to real journalism.” [Twitter/X, 8/16/24, 8/9/24]
    • While attending the 2024 Republican National Convention, Donald Trump Jr. told an MSNBC journalist to “get out of here” and accused the network of lying in its coverage. Trump Jr. also called the network “MSDNC,” suggesting that it is a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, and called its reporters “clowns.” [The Daily Beast, 7/15/24]
    • In an earlier social media post, Trump Jr. praised an anti-LGBTQ rant directed at a reporter by right-wing mixed martial arts fighter Sean Strickland, calling it “amazing” and adding, “If there were more people willing to talk to the Press like this, they’re bullshit wouldn’t be nearly as pervasive.” [Twitter/X, 1/17/24]
    • In July, Project 2025 contributor Rachel Bovard wrote an op-ed for The American Conservative defending former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and accusing the media of participating in a “three-year insurrection against the Constitution and the rule of law.” [The American Conservative, 7/8/24]

  • Other Trump allies have openly threatened investigations and other forms of retaliation against the press during a second Trump term

    • Mike Davis, founder of the right-wing legal advocacy group the Article III Project and a rumored Trump appointee, “has threatened to indict, detain, denaturalize, and deport a handful of Trump critics,” including former NBC host Mehdi Hasan. In one post, Davis wrote that Hasan “is now on my Lists 2 (indict), 4 (detain), 6 (denaturalize), and 3 (deport). I already have his spot picked out in the DC gulag.” In a second post, Davis repeated his attack against Hasan, and added that it should be considered his “application to serve” as Trump's next attorney general. [Twitter/X, 11/20/23, 11/16/23; Rolling Stone, 7/9/24]
    • On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, which has been the media hub for Project 2025, former Trump national security adviser Kash Patel confirmed Trump’s plans to retaliate against the press if given a second term: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media.” Patel added that “we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” Bannon also warned about retribution against the media, stating, “This is just not rhetoric. We are absolutely dead serious.” [Media Matters, 12/5/23, 11/9/23; The Associated Press, 12/5/23]
    • Bannon, a longtime Trump ally who is currently serving a four-month prison sentence for ignoring a congressional subpoena over the January 6 insurrection, threatened “investigations under the Constitution and by the rule of law” into supposed media “colluding with the Justice Department.” Bannon added, “It's coming and we're gonna be unrelenting in it because you tried to destroy the American republic and you came very close.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 6/12/24; CNN, 7/1/24]