A campaign official for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris acknowledged Wednesday that the vice president is deliberately misleading voters about Project 2025.
CNN first reported the stunning admission as part of a fact-check article accusing Harris of making false claims about Project 2025 and former President Donald Trump’s stance on Social Security. CNN’s Daniel Dale revealed:
A Harris campaign official said the campaign has ‘made a deliberate decision to brand all of Trump’s policies’ as ‘Project 2025,’ since they believe ‘it has stuck with voters.’
Since entering the presidential race Sunday, Harris and her campaign have repeatedly tried to link Project 2025 to Trump, despite the former president’s pushback.
A few hours before CNN published its fact-check story Wednesday, Trump called links to Project 2025 “merely disinformation put out by the Radical Left Democrat Thugs. Do not believe them!”
Launched by The Heritage Foundation two years ago, Project 2025 has grown to a coalition of 110 conservative organizations developing a transition plan for the next presidential administration. Its work is nonpartisan and available to whomever occupies the White House in January 2025.
CNN’s report is the first public admission from Democrats or the Harris campaign that their strategy is to deliberately mislead voters about Trump.
Their attacks on Project 2025 escalated following President Joe Biden’s widely panned June 27 debate performance. In response, several liberal media outlets have published fact-check articles disputing Biden’s claims—and now those of Harris.
CNN, for example, examined Harris’ comments at her first campaign rally Tuesday about Project 2025:
When you read it, you will see Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare. He intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and make working families foot the bill. They intend to end the Affordable Care Act. And take us back, then, to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions.
After reviewing “Mandate for Leadership,” the Project 2025 book of policy recommendations, CNN concluded:
One of Harris’ claims about Project 2025 is false, while another is at least misleading. The Project 2025 document does not show that Trump intends to cut Social Security; the document barely discusses Social Security at all and does not propose cuts to the program. In addition, contrary to Harris’ suggestion, Project 2025 does not call to ‘end’ the Affordable Care Act or eliminate its protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
Another fact-check article, published Wednesday by VERIFY, a website devoted to stopping the spread of false information, debunked a myth that Project 2025 called for the elimination of individualized education plans, commonly known as IEPs.
“Neither Project 2025 nor The Heritage Foundation have called specifically for IEPs to be eliminated,” authors Megan Loe and Kelly Jones wrote. “IEPs aren’t mentioned anywhere in ‘Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise,’ which outlines the plan for Project 2025.”
Previously, a USA Today fact-check article rated false the Democrats’ claim that “Project 2025 is a plan from Trump.”
Project 2025 is a political playbook created by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other conservative groups, not Trump, who said he disagrees with elements of the effort.
Despite these and other fact-check articles, Harris’ campaign and the Democrat National Committee continued to make false assertions about Project 2025 as of publication of this Daily Signal story. To combat the misinformation, Project 2025 has debunked the most notable myths.
