Annamaria Vartolomei: Trump is the “Chosen One” for “Project 2025″… Seen Shaking Hands with Head of the Group Kevin Roberts & his Name appears 312 Times in Project 2025 Document

Project 2025 is supposedly a plan drawn by Conservative groups to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision…

With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers etc.

In short, Project 2025 is the Deep State Slayer!

Video Shows Trump Shaking Hands with Head of Group Behind Project 2025

Kevin Roberts became president of the Heritage Foundation in October 2021.

Video authentically shows Trump shaking hands with the head of the Project 2025’s parent group — Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.

Fact Checked : TRUE

Following increased scrutiny in July 2024 of Project 2025 — a project organized by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation to “pave the way for an effective conservative Administration” in 2025 — former President Donald Trump attempted to distance himself from the effort on Truth Social:

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.

As a result, a video of Trump shaking hands with the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, went viral as a response to his denial:

This video, unearthed by the left-leaning Media Matters for America, is accurately described, and comes from an April 2022 keynote address the former president gave at a Heritage Foundation leadership conference. In the clip, Trump wishes Roberts good luck on his appointment as president of the think tank, a tenure that began in October 2021:

I want to thank Kevin. He’s going to be so incredible. I know that for a fact. I know what he did and where he came from, and he’s going to be outstanding and congratulations to his very exciting new role and a very important role.

As the Heritage Foundation points out on its website, it is the primary organization behind Project 2025. Roberts described the release of one of the project’s key documents this way in April 2023:

For over two years, the Left has ignored the voice of everyday Americans leading to crippling inflation, biological males dominating women’s sports, rampant violence, and a crisis in education not seen in decades. Our country is all but unrecognizable.

This is why the conservative movement is coming together to prepare for the next conservative administration. Heritage is convening the conservative movement behind the policies to ensure that the next president has the right policy and personnel necessary to dismantle the administrative state and restore self-governance to the American people.

As reported by The Associated Press, the directors of Project 2025 are Heritage Foundation employees who formerly worked for Trump:

Some of the people involved in Project 2025 are former senior administration officials. The project’s director is Paul Dans, who served as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under Trump. Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt was featured in one of Project 2025’s videos.

John McEntee, a former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump administration, is a senior adviser. McEntee told the conservative news site The Daily Wire earlier this year that Project 2025’s team would integrate a lot of its work with the campaign after the summer when Trump would announce his transition team.

Roberts generated further controversy on July 2, 2024, when he told Steve Bannon — a former White House strategist under Trump — on his podcast that conservatives “are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Because the video in question shows Trump meeting with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, and because the Heritage Foundation is the parent organization behind Project 2025, the rumor is therefore… “True.”?

At the same time,

Trump’s Name Appears 312 Times in Project 2025 Document

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s name is listed 312 times in Project 2025’s policy document.

The word “Trump” appears 312 times in Project 2025’s policy document “Mandate for Leadership 2025.

In early July 2024, a claim spread (archived) on social media that former U.S. President Donald Trump’s name was listed 312 times in a document from Project 2025 — a conservative group’s plan to reshape the government under a Republican administration. “Even though Donald Trump is Project 2025, he doesn’t want people to find out. RT so people know about it,” one post on the topic said.

“Trump’s name appears in the Project 2025 Manifesto 312 times, but he knows nothing about it,” read an X post with more than 689,000 views.

Project 2025 has four pillars: a policy agenda outlined in a document titled “Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise,” a personnel database of “conservatives from all walks of life to serve in the next conservative Administration,” a training system for potential political appointees, and a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of a new administration.

We searched and found the word “Trump” does appear 312 times in the “Mandate for Leadership 2025” — the document outlining Project 2025 supporters’ proposals.

(Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise)

Trump and Project 2025

Project 2025 is a policy initiative proposed by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation with the participation of many of Trump’s allies. However, Trump has publicly stated he disagrees with some of Project 2025’s recommendations and distanced himself from the initiative.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote in a July 5, 2024, post on Truth Social. “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.”

Authors of ‘Mandate for Leadership 2025’

The first 23 mentions of “Trump” in the “‘Mandate for Leadership 2025” appear in the “Authors” section of the document, which details the authors’ backgrounds and experience. Selected examples are below (emphasis ours):

[Jonathan Berry] previously served as Chief Counsel for the Trump transition and earlier clerked for Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Judge Jerry Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

[Adam Candeub] served as acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Deputy Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department during the Trump Administration.

Ken Cuccinelli served as Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2019 and then, from November 2019 through the end of the Trump Administration, as Acting Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Rick Dearborn served as Deputy Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump … . He also served as Executive Director of the 2016 President-elect Donald Trump transition team.

Christopher Miller served in several positions during the Trump Administration, including as Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Peter Navarro holds a PhD in economics from Harvard and was one of only three senior White House officials to serve with Donald Trump from the 2016 campaign to the end of the President’s first term.

[Brooks D. Tucker] helped to craft the policy framework for President-elect Trump‘s transition team and served as the Senior Policy Adviser for National Security and Veterans Affairs to Senator Richard Burr from 2010 to 2015.

‘President Trump’

There were dozens of instances in the document that directly referred to Trump. “President Trump” was mentioned 41 times, and “President Donald Trump” appeared 14 times throughout the document. Selected examples are provided below:

Under President Trump, OLMS required unions to disclose involvement in trusts that they either own a majority stake in or control.

Expand defensive cyber-effects operations authorized by President Trump‘s classified National Security Presidential Memorandum 13, “United States Cyber Operations Policy.”

The next President should also reinstate the many executive orders signed by President Trump that were designed to make the regulatory process more just, efficient, and transparent.

After the 2016 election, President Trump faced special hostility from the opposition party and the media in getting his appointees confirmed or even considered by the Senate.

In 2018, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13855 to, among other things, promote active management of forests and reduce wildfire risks.

Prior to the arrival of President Donald Trump‘s appointees in June 2020, budgeting, financial responsibility, and spending totaled over $800 million per year, with virtually no oversight or supervision.

Reinstate President Trump‘s plan for opening most of the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska to leasing and development.

Some common phrases in the document involving Trump’s name include “Trump-appointed leadership,” “Trump-Biden tariffs,” “Trump’s Schedule F,” “Trump rules” and “Trump-Russia collusion”:

Numerous career staff whistleblowers came forward to sound the alarm about OTF to Trump-appointed leadership.

Job number one for the next Administration is to return to sensible trade policies and eliminate the destructive Trump-Biden tariffs.

In particular, the IC must restore confidence in its political neutrality to rectify the damage done by the actions of former IC leaders and personnel regarding the claims of Trump-Russia collusion following the 2016 election and the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop investigation and media revelations of its existence during the 2020 election.

Reissue Trump’s Schedule F executive order to permit discharge of nonperforming employees.

Rescind the Biden rules and reinstate the Trump rules regarding … .

Additionally, Trump was quoted once, in the context of trade policy:

Tonight, I am also asking you to pass the United States Reciprocal Trade Act, so that if another country places an unfair tariff on an American product, we can charge them the exact same tariff on the exact same product that they sell to us.

President Donald J. Trump, 2019 State of the Union Address

Meanwhile,