Donald Trump has a message for conservative foot soldiers: I define the movement, not you.
It is not a new edict after the GOP convention featured a condensed, Trump-centric platform that softened the party’s long-standing positions on abortion and broke with its orthodoxy on trade and entitlements. But it was reinforced loudly this week when Trump’s campaign delighted in the Heritage Foundation’s announcement that the head of its controversial Project 2025 was stepping down, delivering a warning to others looking to link themselves to Trump: This “should serve as notice … it will not end well for you.”
A campaign obsessed with owning its own message is driving home the point: This is not a coalition campaign, and anything that deviates from Trump will be swiftly neutralized. Now, the broader conservative movement is trying to figure out what it means for a potential second Trump administration.
Some expressed dismay that after strong displays of loyalty, Trump would so easily cast aside the people toiling to ensure that he would not again face one of his main laments about the presidency: that he was continually disappointed that people he had hired chose to thwart his instructions. Others saw a necessary, if ham-fisted, effort to put to bed a group seen as repeatedly speaking out of turn, to the point of becoming an issue in the election.
And then there is the fact that Project 2025’s work product still stands ready for use, if it and other political inconveniences for Trump do not get in the way of his return to office.
In his message resigning as the head of Project 2025, Paul Dans told Heritage Foundation colleagues that their personnel database for a future administration had grown to almost 20,000 applicants and that they would “hand off” their policy products and recommendations for possible use when necessary. “Our course remains unchanged,” he wrote.
Marc Short, a former Trump official and chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence who has since disavowed Trump, said Trump’s attacks on the group show a campaign “based on personality rather than one based on a set of principles that we’re fighting for.”
“If there ever was any group that was probably aligned with what the president’s stated goal is of destroying the ‘deep state,’ allegedly, that was a large focus of Project 2025,” Short said.
Dans and members of his team were in contact on and off with all of the Republican primary campaigns, including Trump’s, about their work. Once Trump won the GOP primaries, the contact continued, a source familiar with the dynamic said. Dans did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, Danielle Alvarez, a Trump senior adviser, said the campaign had emphasized for nearly a year that Trump and his campaign alone speak for his second-term agenda.
“Since the Fall of 2023, President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term,” Alvarez said in a statement. “President Trump personally led the effort to establish 20 promises made to the forgotten men and women across our nation, as well as RNC Platform — these are the only policies endorsed by President Trump for a second term.” She slammed efforts linking Trump to Project 2025 as “fear-mongering” by his Democratic opponents.
Whether it has any lasting effect may be too early to say, but for now, “there are a lot of people feeling bruised,” a former policy adviser to Trump said. “I don’t think anyone confuses Trump with movement conservatives, but in his first term, he relied on them to do a lot of the lifting.”
Instead of going after the Heritage Foundation, this former aide questioned why the campaign was not talking about its own platform or plans for a future administration. While Trump and people around him started official transition planning in spring 2016 during his last campaign as a non-incumbent, naming former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as his transition chair, Trump has not made any such public move this time.
The kickoff for a pre-election transition effort is happening later this time, but it could be imminent, beginning as soon as three days after Democrats officially name their nominee during the party’s convention this month. That is when federal resources and office space for staff members will become available, according to a spokesperson for the General Services Administration, which oversees the process.
Stephen Moore, an informal adviser to Trump who is not a part of transition planning but has discussed future appointments with him, named three people he expected to be involved in the effort: Heritage Foundation founder Edwin Feulner, Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., and business executive Linda McMahon, board chair of the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute.
Two other sources also named McMahon, a close Trump ally who served in his Cabinet, as a person expected to play a significant role in official transition planning. Feulner and Hagerty were involved in 2016, with Hagerty as the director of presidential appointments and Feulner’s arrival seen as bolstering Trump’s conservative bona fides.
The campaign has said that only personnel or policy announcements that come from Trump or his campaign should be deemed official.
“If you want to see a blueprint for the next Trump administration, look to the party platform,” Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump wrote Thursday in an op-ed in The Washington Times. “The Republican party is the party of common sense. Project 2025 possesses little, if any, of that.”
Trump allies say that in the meantime, they are fielding requests from an array of high-caliber candidates for administration jobs, what a former official called “a constant drumbeat” of potential high-level appointees. It is a departure from 2016, when Trump was not expected to win, two people said.
While some are wary of people trying to hitch their wagons to Trump, one person said that with four years of experience in office, there is confidence that the Trump team will know how to sort out the appointments.
“We know where the talent is. We know where the talent isn’t,” one of the people said.
Still, staffing the administration could be a major place where Project 2025’s work plays into a Trump administration, even if the Trump campaign swatted the effort aside.
“If Trump is re-elected, as we hope he will be, there will be thousands of appointments,” said Steven Groves, who helped put together the Project 2025 policy book. “He and his team will be making those appointments. What 2025 hoped to do was gather up names of personnel with hopes of serving.”
Project 2025, a collaboration of more than 100 conservative groups, has outlined a proposed governing agenda in a 900-plus-page mandate that has promised to reshape the federal government. Many of its chapters were written or edited by former Trump officials. And the project is staffed by Republicans who sought to strengthen Trump’s power in the waning days of his administration by rooting out officials considered insufficiently loyal.
The flagship effort of a $22 million transition operation, Project 2025 has helped draw record donations to Heritage — which in turn has led some in Trump’s orbit to label the longtime conservative think tank as a “grift.” It has also allowed Democrats to sharpen their attacks on Trump by raising the alarm about what a future Trump administration bodes.
Moore, a chapter co-author, said people should temper expectations. “I think many of the recommendations will be put into action and others will fall by the wayside,” he said, as was the case under Ronald Reagan, when the foundation swelled into an influential behemoth.
Trump, distancing himself from the project last month, called it “a document that many of the points are fine” and “many of the points are absolutely ridiculous.” He said he had “nothing to do with” the mandate, but in a nod to the growing attention on him from the project and the shifting nature of the race as he enters the general election, he said it had offered fodder to his political opponents. “People get angry by it,” he told Fox News.
In recent posts on Truth Social, Trump said any reported affiliation between himself and Project 2025 was “misinformation.” “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them,” he also said.
Groves, who helped put together Project 2025 policy framework, said: “I understand politics. I understand campaign politics. The president has only said what’s true. It’s not his project. And it’s not.”
Groves, who was a part of Trump’s 2016 transition, continued: “The Trump campaign is focused on what it needs to be focused on, which is winning the race. And the project is going to continue.”
Others see an unrecoverable break.
“The reality is that no one but Trump is making these decisions,” said a former senior official who has been involved in Project 2025’s policy work, as well as efforts by other groups. “But make no mistake: Trump is batting them around like a yarn ball.”
Groves urged critics to take a step back even as he acknowledged that limit. “The project isn’t a decision-maker,” he said. “We’re in the throes of a volatile election cycle. We’re all on the same team, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. We as conservatives should unite around the same agenda.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
