Donald Thinks We’re Idiots

Of course he knows about Project 2025

My uncle likes to call America a “stupid country.”

But we’re not nearly as stupid as he hopes we are, because we definitely know that he knows exactly what’s in Project 2025, the fascist playbook put together by Trump administration insiders and the Heritage Foundation—because it was written for him.

When Donald wrote, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them,” he was lying. It’s that simple. 

Also, for those of you who still believe in logic, it’s very difficult to disagree with something about which you know absolutely nothing.

And for somebody who “knows nothing,” Donald seems quite worried that we’re going to find out the truth.

On Thursday, he went even further when he posted the following:  "I have not seen [Project 2025], have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it."

If you believe that, I’ve got a South Florida resort filled with illegally acquired national secrets to sell you. 

The truth is that Donald Trump’s Project 2025 (which is how we must refer to it from now on) is terrifying—a real and perfect distillation and embodiment of all of the dystopian horrors Donald will visit on this country if he gets back into power.

The whole point of the playbook is to consolidate power behind an imperial right-wing executive, rig the economy so it works only for the richest among us, punish political enemies, and force an extreme Christian Nationalist ideology on Americans while institutionalizing racism, misogyny and anti-immigrant hatred.

None of us will be safe.

As CNN reported this week, the ties between Donald and the Heritage Foundation’s chilling blueprint for American fascism are vast and undeniable. 

“Six of his former Cabinet secretaries helped write or collaborated on the 900-page playbook for a second Trump term published by the Heritage Foundation. Four individuals Trump nominated as ambassadors were also involved, along with several enforcers of his controversial immigration crackdown. And about 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff.

“In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025, a CNN review found, 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.

“Overall, CNN found nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump, covering nearly every aspect of his time in politics and the White House – from day-to-day foot soldiers in Washington to the highest levels of his government.”

If that isn’t enough to convince you, this is what Donald said when he spoke to the think tank behind Donald Trump’s Project 2025 in 2022: 

“We have shown the power of our winning formula working closely with many of the great people at Heritage. We've worked with you a lot. We’re gonna work on some other things that are going to be very exciting. . . . I think maybe the most exciting of all”

I didn’t realize “exciting” was a synonym for “horrifying.” It’s a Christian Nationalist dream of turning America into Texas with Donald, of all people, in control of everyone and everything while an army of empowered fascists carryies out his every cruel whim. It’s even scarier when you realize the corrupt, illegitimate Supreme Court super-majority just ensured that Donald can (officially) do whatever he wants with total impunity. 

According to Mike Lillis of The Hill, “The project seeks to eradicate the so-called administrative state and fill the newly empty spots with conservative loyalists. It features four ‘pillars’: laying out a right-wing policy road map for the next conservative president to follow, providing a political strategy for adopting that agenda within 180 days, recruiting an ‘army’ of conservatives who will work in that administration, and offering a training component to ensure that political appointees are ‘ready on day one.’”

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman is one of the House Democrats leading the charge to inform and educate Americans about what Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would do to our country. He told The Hill that “Americans don’t understand just how far down the road to a dystopic, right-wing theocracy we are right now.”

“And that, for me at least, is the priority: making sure people know it, and making sure we’re ready to confront it,” Huffman said. 

I’m with Huffman—every American needs to know what Project 2025 is. They need to know that Donald is behind it, he fully embraces, and he will enact every single policy outlined in it if by some tragic chance he gets back into the White House.

The reason Donald has been trying to put distance between him and Donald Trump’s Project 2025 is because, as stupid as he might think Americans are, he knows we would never stand for what he wants to do to us. 

So, he’ll keep lying about Donald Trump’s Project 2025 and his support for it, and we’ll keep fighting to get the truth out there.

Failing to do that would be pretty stupid—and we are so much smarter than that.