Donald Trump just gave away the game about Project 2025
When I first read about Project 2025, I thought “So what?” It was just a list of the corrupt and extremist things that Donald Trump and his people would obviously do if Trump ever got back into power. It was kind of like reading about what would happen if you got electrocuted. It’s awful, but you already pretty much know how the story goes.
But because our side loves any opportunity to freak out, a lot of folks on our side began obsessing over Project 2025 as if it were an evil magic wand that Trump was going to wave that was going to magically put him back in power. I frankly found it annoying. Yelling “here’s why we’re going to lose” is a good way to lose.
Something has changed, though. This whole “Project 2025” thing has taken the complex nature of Trumpian corruption and right wing extremism and boiled it down to two scary words. Do most people even know what it means? No. But it sure sounds scary when they say that Trump, a known villain, is going to do “Project 2025” to us if he’s in power in 2025.
In that sense “Project 2025” has almost become for our side what cries of “Critical Race Theory” were for the other side in 2021. No one outside of academia even remembers the “CRT” craze at this point, but it did make enough moderates scared of liberalism that it swayed the 2021 gubernatorial election to the Republicans in Virginia.
Of course the Republicans were lying about the nature of CRT, and they were doing so in blatantly racist fashion, as they tend to do. In contrast, everything that President Biden and the Democratic Party are saying about Project 2025 is true. It wasn’t written by Trump, but it was written by the powerful right wing forces who own Trump. So it is what would happen if Trump took power.
At this point the “Project 2025” narrative has reached a point where Trump (or whoever is ghostwriting for him on social media) is now trying to distance himself from it. Trump posted this yesterday: “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.”
So there you have it. The manner in which Trump’s 2024 campaign is being defined by the corrupt extremism of “Project 2025” is harmful enough to Trump that he’s now trying to distance himself from it. That’s always a giveaway that we should push harder on the issue. So while our side’s initial “Oh no, Project 2025 means we’re doomed” stance was a self defeating one, the game has now changed. The narrative is now “Project 2025 is why we must and will defeat Trump in 2024” – and that’s a winner. So let’s go hammer Trump with it. Donate to Palmer Report
