POLITICS
Why Donald Trump may have disavowed Project 2025
Heritage has declared a felony conviction a disqualifier for jobs in a future conservative administration
For two years, the Heritage Foundation — the conservative Washington think tank — has been talking about its now infamous Project 2025, a multi-faceted plan to prepare for the next conservative president.
Mandate for Leadership, its 900-page report’s been out for a while, detailing a host of far-out policy plans on everything from climate to abortion to education, but Andy Kroll from ProPublica and Nick Surgey from Documented has just recently shared the training videos for interested job seekers that have been kept quite private until now.
It’s hard to understand exactly why.
The 23 that are now available contain a lot of what you would expect for job applicants and those interested in receiving the certificate after completing all the modules. There’s some haranguing about the “administrative state” and plenty of complaining about gender identity and critical race theory. None of this is new.
Other videos, however, are downright informative and interesting.
There’s an excellent — but largely untold — history about the Trump transition in 2016 revealed by Rick Dearborn and Ed Corrigan. The video on “Appointees and Policymaking” — featuring several thoughtful former Reagan, Bush, and Trump officials — seems to make the point that it is in fact appointees who make policy, not bureaucrats. This point is lost on some of the others in the series who are convinced the Deep State was out to get them.
Given these have been kept secret for so long, when I watched the nearly 11 hours of YouTube clips, I kept wondering when these were recorded. They aren’t dated, but given Trump’s recent denial of knowledge of Project 2025 and the awkward distancing of many conservatives from this effort, it does raise the question of when this all started. It also suggests a reason why Trump’s rebuffed the project.
There’s one clue to be found.
In the video by Spencer Chretien, a former Trump personnel office official, he celebrates that Project 2025 is not solely a Heritage Foundation initiative. He cites more than 40 conservative groups — in and outside of DC — had joined the Project 2025 coalition.
This suggests the video was recorded in January of 2023, because Chretien wrote at that time that Project 2025 was at 45 members. That date also is significant, because the coalition didn’t stop there, it continued to grow. It was up to 50 members by April, 75 members by October, 2023 and over 100 by February of 2024.
Who really knows, but my guess is that, at least, the Chretien video was recorded at the start of the 2023, and maybe others were, too.
For most of the videos, this is an inconsequential fact. It would hardly seem to matter when you record a video on “The History of the Conservative Movement” or “The Federal Budget Process”. These things don’t change.
In one case, though, the timing matters. That’s because of the intended audience of the videos: would-be job applicants to a future conservative president. For those aspiring political appointees, it is clear what Project 2025 things about a career in crime. It disqualifies you from consideration.
Chretien — who spent his time in government in personnel and staffing — makes that much clear in his video: “It’s much easier in all areas of areas of the federal hiring process if you haven’t broken the law.” He then advises, “So, obey the law and we’ll have fewer problems with background checks and paperwork for the hiring process.”
Chretien isn’t alone in this view. In a video on “Federal Background Investigations & Security Clearance”, Dennis Kirk, associate director of Project 2025, who also served in the Office of Personnel Management in the Trump White House, explains the details of process.
In that, Kirk provides a list of “Federal Employment Disqualifiers.” Not surprisingly, “Criminal History” is a big one.
Kirk says, “in most cases individuals tried in federal criminal courts are disqualified from government jobs.” He continues, “Crimes, such as fraud, embezzlement, and tax evasion, show a lack of moral character just like similar white collar offences that are highly frowned upon and will bar you from service.”
Not to be misunderstood, Kirk concludes: “If you’ve been convicted of a crime, you will not be serving in the federal government.”
Here again, this much isn’t surprising. Though there’s a debate to be had about whether this is right, there hasn’t been a Republican or Democratic administration that has regularly hired anyone with a conviction for a federal crime.
This does, however, suggest a reason why Donald Trump may have grown so squeamish — if not livid — about Project 2025. In between the apparent recording of these videos and the campaign, Trump faced the consequences of his own misdeeds.
In May, Trump was convicted in court on all 34 felony charges, charges that largely fit with Kirk’s list.
If we take Heritage these training videos serious, this implies they’ve been recommending to job candidates the exact opposite of what the former President has been claiming. Surely, if the videos were recorded today, these strong statements on a criminal record would be redacted.
Alas, ProPublica and Documented have done the reporting to show what Heritage really thinks about who is fit for office.
