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Media Matters

Sean Hannity claims he doesn't know anything about Project 2025, weeks after hosting the director of Project 2025

Written by John Whitehouse

Research contributions from Isabella Corrao

Published

On his July 19 Premiere Radio Networks radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed he knows nothing about Project 2025. However, just weeks earlier in May on the same program, Hannity hosted Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025 for The Heritage Foundation.

Project 2025 is an extreme right-wing initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and personnel to the next Republican presidential administration. The effort involves more than 100 partner organizations, and its nearly 900-page policy book — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise — represents a major threat to democracy.

Project 2025 proposals would severely inhibit the federal government’s protections around reproductive rights, LGBTQ and civil rights, worker protections including overtime, immigration, as well as its climate change efforts and much more.

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  • Sean Hannity on Project 2025: “People keep writing and asking me about this. I'm like, I have no freaking idea what you're talking about.”

    Sean Hannity on Project 2025, 7/19/24

    SEAN HANNITY

    From the July 19, 2024, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show

    SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Back to Joe Biden. Again, Biden released a statement today on top of all these calls for him to, you know, drop out of this race. Last night, the American people saw the same Donald Trump they rejected four years ago. Over 90 minutes, he focused on his own grievances. No, he didn't. With no plan to unite us, he did actually present a plan. No plan to make life better for working people. Well, your plans failed spectacularly, Joe.

    He avoided mentioning his Project 2025 agenda. People keep writing and asking me about this. I'm like, I have no freaking idea what you're talking about, the same thing that Trump said. I don't know anything about it. Americans know exactly where he wants to take this country. They always say that he said, well, I want to be a dictator. He said that in an interview with me. I said, you know, are you going to go forward with retribution? He said, no. I'm just gonna be a dictator for a day. I'm like, what? I'm sitting there -- he goes, no. I just want to use the power to secure our borders, number one. What was the second thing that he said Lynda? And he said -- I think he said something to the effect of -- oh, energy independence. That's what it was.

  • Weeks earlier, Hannity hosted Project 2025 Director Paul Dans

    Sean Hannity hosts Project 2025 director Paul Dans, 5/14/24

    SEAN HANNITY

    From the May 14, 2024, edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show

  • There are many close ties between Trump and Project 2025 as well

    As Media Matters has previously noted, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has claimed that he has “nothing to do with” Project 2025, a broad effort to develop a blueprint for the next Republican presidential administration, but the initiative’s inner circle has a closely linked history to Trump and his previous administration. At least 140 former Trump administration staffers have worked on Project 2025, and Trump’s policy for his second term has significant overlap with the Project 2025 agenda.

    Reporting has also shown many ties between GOP VP nominee J.D. Vance and Project 2025 architects.