Project 2025 director defends fake electors scheme

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

From the June 18, 2024, edition of C-SPAN's Washington Journal 

CALLER: You talked to that other caller about the Constitution. Well, I don't think I want anyone who said I will suspend the Constitution to keep myself in power and told his vice president to reject Biden electors and keep his fake electors just like he told Mike Pence. I don't think I want anyone like that to appoint any loyalist.

...

PAUL DANS (DIRECTOR, PROJECT 2025): Now the caller's point, you know, about, you know, suspending the Constitution, that's just erroneous. To be clear, the alternate slate of electors, that’s ordained in our history, there – you can go back to Hawaii in 1960, you can go back to elections in the 1900s. So, that, I’ll put aside for now.

Paul Dans is the director of the extremist Project 2025.

When former the former president Donald Trump in 2022 called for terminating the Constitution, Fox News gave it just one minute of coverage.

“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” Trump wrote in a Saturday Truth Social post in response to a new report on Twitter’s content moderation during the 2020 election. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” 

Trump’s nakedly authoritarian statement drew criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans. But Fox has spent just over one minute on the story as of posting on Monday, according to a Media Matters review.

Additionally, Dans is downplaying — with a false comparison to Hawaii in 1960 — the 2020 fake elector schemes that have led to indictments in multiple jurisdictions.