Project 2025 Honcho Raves About Trump’s First Two Months Back in Office: ‘Way Beyond My Wildest Dreams’
AP Photo/George Walker IV
During the 2024 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump insisted, over and over again, that Project 2025 had nothing to do with him or his campaign and the project’s director, Paul Dans, was pushed out as a scapegoat. But now, as we approach the two-month mark of Trump’s second term, it looks like Dans may be having the last laugh as many of Project 2025’s agenda items are being aggressively implemented by the White House.
Many Trump critics were always skeptical of his claimed rejections of Project 2025 during the campaign, pointing to the nearly 150 people who worked for Trump who then worked on Project 2025 and other close ties between Trump’s inner circle and the conservative blueprint’s creators at the Heritage Foundation.
Dans took a bit of a victory lap in an interview with Politico’s Michael Hirsch, who wrote that the former Project 2025 “chief architect” had now “effectively confirmed what Democrats were saying all along and Trump himself denied: There really is almost no difference between Project 2025 and what Trump was planning all along and is now implementing.”
“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Dans told Hirsch. “It’s not going to be the easiest road to hoe going forward. The deep state is going to get its breath back. But the way that they’ve been able to move and upset the orthodoxy, and at the same time really capture the imagination of the people, I think portends a great four years.”
When asked about the accusations from Democrats that Project 2025 and the Trump White House agenda were “one and the same,” Dans replied that “directionally, they have a lot in common, but so do great minds,” and again emphasized how pleased he was with Trump and Elon Musk’s aggressive approach so far:
We had hoped, those of us who worked putting together Project 2025, that the next conservative president would seize the day, but Trump is seizing every minute of every hour. I’m not sure that you’d be able to implement Project 2025 without Donald Trump’s ability to bring people together and Elon Musk’s ability to focus the direction of the work.
Dans insisted that Trump had “absolutely” told the truth when he kept claiming he had nothing to do with Project 2025, because it was “done outside of President Trump” by the “conservative movement” to lay out “what we want to see in the next conservative president.”
Hirsch asked Dans if it was “tough” to “be on the outside looking in” as the Trump White House was pushing forward with its plans, and if he regretted criticizing Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.
“Well, as Frank [Sinatra] would say, regrets I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention,” replied Dans.
Dans demurred when Hirsch asked him about “examples where there seems to be divergence between Project 2025 and what Trump and Musk are doing,” like with USAID, refusing to criticize the administration or DOGE’s efforts.
When asked about the media reports and comments from Democrats criticizing Project 2025 before the election, Dans said “Fakes news is going to be fake news,” and added that trying to argue “with leftist misinformation agents on MSNBC” would have been “kind of a pointless endeavor, in my estimation.”
“Are you looking to get a job in the Trump administration now?” asked Hirsch. “Is this a job interview?”
Dans replied that he did have a job, as a father of four kids and as an attorney, but added that he viewed the “mission” of Project 2025 as always having been “to get our government going in the right direction,” and was glad his work was able “to help move this entire ball forward.”
“Should President Trump or his team need me, I will gladly answer the call,” said Dans.
Read the full interview at Politico.
