Former Project 2025 director downplays Trump ties, but says he hopes he’d implement the plan
CNN
Paul Dans, the former director of the group behind the conservative policy roadmap Project 2025, said on Monday he’s not worried about Vice President Kamala Harris invoking the proposal against Donald Trump in Tuesday’s debate and said he’d like to see the former president implement the plan if he’s returned to the White House.
Paul Dans, the former director of the group behind the conservative policy roadmap Project 2025, said on Monday he’s not worried about Vice President Kamala Harris invoking the proposal against Donald Trump in Tuesday’s debate and said he’d like to see the former president implement the plan if he’s returned to the White House. Dans told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in his first TV interview since stepping down as director in late July that the former president “had nothing to do with” the Heritage Foundation-backed policy playbook forged by dozens of different organizations. But Dans, the former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management under Trump, said he’s been to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort on “several” occasions and has met with Trump campaign leadership “from time to time.” He said he’d “shaken hands” with Trump, most recently at a Christian media convention in Tennessee where the former president spoke in February. His comments come as Harris and her allies have sought to link Trump to Project 2025 to portray him as extreme. Democrats have repeatedly pointed to the set of conservative policies as Trump’s and the Republican Party’s roadmap if they return to the White House and control Congress, often highlighting proposals on reproductive health care, prescription drug costs and education policy. The vice president often references to the plan to suggest Trump wants to take the country “back to the past,” while insisting to supporters, “We are not going back.” Trump has repeatedly denied any involvement with Project 2025, saying on Truth Social earlier this year that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” But at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found earlier this year, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors to “Mandate for Leadership,” the project’s extensive manifesto for overhauling the executive branch. Dans said Trump himself was not involved in crafting the proposal and said the number of former Trump administration employees contributing to the project was an example of “natural” coordination between former colleagues.
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