On the campaign trail last year, Donald Trump swore he knew “nothing” about Project 2025. As a candidate, he said he didn’t even know who had written the far-right blueprint for his second term, called some of its ideas “absolutely ridiculous” and “abysmal” and argued it was “pure disinformation” for Democrats to try to link him to that plan.
In case it wasn’t clear at the time, Trump was lying.
Along with other journalists, I tried to make that as clear as possible during the campaign, noting the ties that Trump had with its authors, the track record the Heritage Foundation had on getting his support for its ideas and his own previous remarks — as well as the fact that he had declined to say specifically which ideas in Project 2025’s 900 pages he considered so ridiculous.
When he won a second term, Trump dropped the pretense and began enacting Project 2025’s proposals, in some cases to the letter. In the eight months since inauguration, he has checked off most of its major proposals:
• launching a mass deportation program
• purging civil servants and replacing them with partisan loyalists
• defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
• reducing the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s role in disaster response
• eliminating federal “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts
• banning transgender troops in the military
At the same time, he appointed Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget. He nominated contributor E.J. Antoni as Commissioner of Labor Statistics, despite the latter’s lack of the usual credentials. (The Senate has not voted on Antoni’s confirmation yet.) And he appointed Brendan Carr, who literally wrote the chapter on the Federal Communications Commission, as chairman of the FCC.
In the past, a president who made a major reversal of a campaign promise might be expected to show some contrition, or else try to explain their reversal due to changing circumstances, as Woodrow Wilson did when he broke his pledge to keep the U.S. out of World War I or George H.W. Bush did when he signed a budget that raised taxes.
Trump has given no explanation. But the FCC’s Carr just made quite clear that he thinks this is all a big joke. After ABC suspended late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel, Kevin McHale, an actor and singer you may remember as Artie on the T.V. show “Glee,” posted on X that “this was all in Project 2025, btw.” Carr then responded by posting a common reaction GIF of actor Jack Nicholson from the movie “Anger Management” nodding “yes.” The head of the FCC seems like a totally normal guy. Thanks for confirming what we already know. pic.twitter.com/0Qo6zuAKVq It’s bad enough that Trump lied about his agenda, enacted deeply unpopular policies after he was sworn in and appointed a loyalist to the FCC who is seeking to punish everyone from local news reporters to late-night comics for exercising their First Amendment rights. But this just makes it worse. Some of the 77 million Americans who voted for Trump really believed him when he said he had nothing to do with Project 2025. (Trust me, I heard from them when I wrote about it.) Some of them really thought that a presidential candidate would live up to his word or follow through on his promises to lower the price of eggs. And everyone from conservative podcasters to Republican senators — sources that they trust — encouraged them in that belief, even when they knew better. Look, politicians are going to bend the truth at times or make promises they can’t keep. But research shows they actually try to keep most of their campaign promises. When they don’t, they usually try to explain themselves so voters can decide if they were justified. That’s just part of the push-and-pull of politics. But Carr’s post treats that all as just a big joke. That’s not an insult to journalists like me — or even the third-male lead on a TV show that ended in 2015. It’s an insult to Trump’s own voters, who should be outraged that they’re being treated like chumps for believing him.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline. 
