Like an Albatross

Evening Dispatch

For somebody who is such a prolific liar, Donald is also quite a bad one. You would think that somebody who has as much practice as he’s had would be better at it. You could say the same thing about his golf game.

I was reminded of this earlier today when Donald’s campaign put out a press release in response to the announcement that Paul Dans, the director at the Heritage Foundation of Project 2025, the fascist manifesto for a second Trump administration, is stepping down.

Written by two senior campaign advisors, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the release read,

“[Donald’s] campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign and should not be associated with the campaign or the president in any way.

“Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”

It’s as if these people can’t help but be thugs. But the thuggery is just another indication of how rattled they’ve been by evidence-based attempts to connect Donald with the extreme right-wing transition and governance plans laid out in the document.

This is in line with Donald’s own attempts to distance himself from the dystopian proposals outlined in Project 2025 as soon as it became clear they were extremely unpopular with those voters who were familiar with them.

"I know nothing about Project 2025,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I have no idea who is behind it.”

He followed up with another post: "I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it."

He also claimed to know nothing about the people behind it even though 140 people who worked in his administration are involved in Project 2025.

Methinks, of course, he doth protest too much.

The more Democrats have sounded the alarm, the more Americans have taken notice and the more uneasy Donald and his campaign have become. Anybody paying attention can see the connection between his authoritarian policies (mass internment of immigrants; much tighter restrictions on abortion, to name just two) and those laid out in the 900-page blueprint.

Not even mainstream political reporters were buying the campaign’s denials. New York Times’ reporter Jonathan Swan wrote on Twitter, “Project 2025 has become inconvenient for the Trump campaign but it has produced nearly all the policy it was ever going to & owns the central personnel database in the conservative movement.” Swan continued by pointing out that “it’s cost-free to trash Project 25 now for political reasons & then take their database to pick & choose from after winning election.”

Only two weeks ago, Chris Cuomo asked Ken Cucinelli, former Deputy of Homeland Security in the Trump administration and co-author of one of the essays in Project 2025, “What does it mean that Donald has said ‘I have no idea what this is. I haven’t looked at it. It’s not mine?’”

Cucinelli responded, “I don’t think it means anything. He is running a campaign.”

It’s good to see the usual suspects aren’t falling for Donald’s lies. Not only because he so bad at it, but also because Project 2025—and all of the dangerous anti-democratic plans it contains for the next Republican administration, needs to be hung around his neck like an albatross.