‘This Is Exactly What Trump’s Advisers Had Been Concerned About’: Maggie Haberman Says Ex-President’s Aides Worried That Project 2025 Would Become a Problem

CNN commentator and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said Donald Trump’s campaign is now grappling with a topic it long feared would become an issue.

The conservative Heritage Foundation think tank has produced Project 2025, which is a mega-volume of right-wing agenda items to be realized if Trump is elected president again. A key plank is the destruction of the federal government’s administrative state. Kevin Roberts, who leads the Heritage Foundation, said last week that the U.S. is currently in a “second American Revolution” that will only be “bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Several of those involved in crafting the plan are alums of the Trump administration. However, the former president has tried to distance himself from it, calling it “abysmal.”

Appearing on Monday’s installment of The Source on CNN, Haberman was asked by host Kaitlan Collins to weigh in.

“Trump came out over the weekend and said, ‘I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who’s behind it,'” Collins said. “It is a lot of people who worked for him who are working on this very effort.”

“So, the Biden campaign has decided to frame Project 2025 as a Trump effort,” Haberman responded. “It’s not actually a Trump effort. Agenda 47 is Trump’s policy platform and his aides have actually been very frustrated by a lot of the Project 2025 efforts. It is true that some key Trump advisers are involved in Project 2025. It is true that some of those people would almost certainly staff another Trump administration. But there’s a lot of what is in that document that you’ve never heard Trump talk about that that I don’t think that he would actually be interested in.”

She went on to say that Trump’s aides have worried that Project 2025 would ultimately be something the former president has to answer for.

“But by answering this, by giving this statement, on the one hand, yes, that statement is going to be reflected on in most stories going forward,” Haberman added. “It’ll say Trump says he has nothing to do with this. But then everybody’s going to fact-check that statement and it has just made this into a bigger deal. So, this is exactly what Trump’s advisers had been concerned about for some time. Is this statement going to make this go away? It doesn’t really seem like it.”

Watch above via CNN.

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