Donald Trump has been doing everything he can to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming he knows absolutely nothing about the 922-page manifesto being pushed by the anti-LGBTQ+ Heritage Foundation.
Since joining the ticket, Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance has also tried to downplay his connections to the initiative and the Christian extremists behind it, instead trying to distract people with awkward jokes about Diet Mountain Dew being racist.
Unfortunately, their efforts were all undone literally overnight when it was reported late yesterday that the 38-year-old VP contender wrote the foreword for an upcoming book by Heritage Foundation President and Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts.
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In the foreward to “Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America,” which hits bookstores September 24, right at the peak of the presidential election, Vance praises Roberts for presenting a “new future for conservatism.”
That “new future”, BTW, involves stripping away all protections for queer people, eradicating all funding for DEI programs, eliminating healthcare for trans people, expelling people living with HIV from the military, ending the State Department’s LGBTQ+ equality initiatives overseas, privileging religion over civil laws and rights, outlawing porn, and on, and on, and on.
Vice President Kamala Harris said it best when she told a crowd at a campaign event this week, “Can you believe they put that thing in writing?! 900 pages in writing!”
Vice President Kamala Harris slams Project 2025, calling it "a plan to return America to a dark past" under another Trump term.
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 25, 2024
"Can you believe they put that thing in writing? 900 pages in writing!" https://t.co/J5yu64EUfP pic.twitter.com/R2zZDW89yd
We’re not sure how the people in charge of vetting Vance missed this, especially since the book was written and had already been announced before he was tapped to be Trump’s #2, but pretty much everyone now agrees that it’s a disaster for the Trump campaign.
Seriously, this is even worse than that time in the 2008 presidential election when it was revealed VP candidate Sarah Palin, who opposed sex ed in schools and instead believed teaching abstinence and discouraging premarital sex was the most effective tool in preventing teen pregnancies, had a 17-year-old daughter who was pregnant and, gasp, unmarried.
Project 2025 is deeply, deeply unpopular. According to Navigator Research, as public awareness around the initiative grows, so does its disapproval ratings:
Project 2025 has seen a significant increase in both awareness and unfavorability since our last survey in June. 54 percent of Americans report being familiar with Project 2025, up 25 points since our last survey in late June. Among those familiar with the Project 2025, just 11 percent view it favorably, while 43 percent view it unfavorably, a 24 point increase in its unfavorable rating since last month.
Earlier this week, it was reported that the GOP has been freaking out over whether Trump made a mistake in picking Vance as his running mate.
“Presumably, Trump chose Vance as his VP candidate largely to fire up the MAGA base and boost the Republican ticket in Rust Belt states,” Politico opinion editor Jamie Dettmer noted. “But that was a choice made when Biden was still heading the Democratic ticket. Now that he’s not, Vance may well become a liability.”
The sentiment was confirmed by The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta, who has been closely embedded with the Trump campaign.
“Most striking thing I heard from Trump allies yesterday was the second-guessing of JD Vance—a selection, they acknowledged, that was borne of cockiness, meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter,” Alberta shared on Twitter.
Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, swore at the beginning of the week that there are absolutely no plans to remove Vance from the ticket and that the 34-time convicted ex-president is, in fact, very pleased with him, despite the fact that polls conducted after last week’s Republican National Convention found him to be the least-liked non-incumbent VP nominee since, checks notes, 1980.
“President Trump is thrilled with the choice he made with Senator Vance, and they are the perfect team to take back the White House,” he told Newsweek.
We can only imagine how “thrilled” he was when he woke up this morning and learned the latest bombshell about his running mate.
At this point, an October Surprise would have to involve space aliens.
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) July 21, 2024
Related*
JD Vance’s “deeply weird & creepy” vibes have sent the Trump campaign into a tailspin
JD Vance is not winning over, well, um, anyone.
abfab
Vance, a p o r n addict (and couch surfer) wants to outlaw it? How strange.
abfab
Kimberly Gee Gee vetted him….and more.
Gracious
“In the forward to “Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America,”
Foreword dear, not forward.
RIGay
Nope. Trump knew who he was for a while. Hoping to use “2025” as a roadmap for his administration. Vote BLUE.
Invader7
The Trump supported 2025 Plan wants to not only outlaw porn but close down all sites & telecoms that stream porn: that would be your telecom provider. Oh yeah and put people who produce & watch porn in PRISON. Plus outlaw gay marriage and put GLBTQ people in prison. And form a menstrual registry . And outlaw recreational sex – ban all forms of birth control: the pill /condoms .Only baby making sex would be allowed by the Neo NAZI rightwing fascists in the GOP and @ the Heritage Foundation. But butt face Trump claims he has nothing to do with that deranged 900 +page Nazi wet dream. Except some of his former administration officials are all over the thing. Including that Goebbels wanna be Stephen Miller .
daveku69
As anyone here actually read the 2025 project? No. I did not think so. Well I have. No where in its text does it say it wants to outlaw homosexuality, cancel gay marriage rites. Its only reference to LGBTQ+ is with regards to equity; that a person should not be given bonus points for their sexuality, or who they decide to stick it in and or with what. So stop clutching your pearls. Nobody is coming after your elbow grease.
abfab
POS can’t read maps. Or books for that matter.
nm4047
Irony, an American correcting English. Most likely what the ChatGP came up with after researching who the forward (alleged) ‘author’ is.
montegutdude
Outlaw homosexuality? Give them a minute. Project 2025 proposes eliminating state-level nondiscrimination laws which protect LGBT+ persons from discrimination in housing and employment in the 21 states that have them. It also proposes replacing thousands of government workers with religious political appointees and directly states that its goal is to infuse government and society with Christian values. How do you think that’s going to work out for gay folks? It proposes criminalizing pornography. And lastly no, Project 2025 might not explicitly state same-sex marriage is on the chopping block (but duh.) Conservative justices on the SCOTUS have already signaled their intention to overturn Lawrence and Obgerfell using the same rationale they just used to overturn Roe v. Wade. The makeup of SCOTUS is already 6-3. You wanna make it a full 9-0? No. Trump cannot appoint any more far-right justices to the court. Anyone telling you that Project 2025 is good for the gays or that it won’t be that bad should be shouted down. It’s nothing but a plan to take LGBT folks 40 years back in time, to a time a lot of us lived through, that sucked. So, yes. pearl clutching is warranted in-f@ck!ng-deed.
montegutdude
Outlaw homosexuality? Give them a minute. Project 2025 proposes eliminating state-level nondiscrimination laws which protect LGBT+ persons from discrimination in housing and employment in the 21 states that have them. It also proposes replacing thousands of government workers with religious political appointees and directly states that its goal is to infuse government and society with Christian values. How do you think that’s going to work out for gay folks? It proposes criminalizing pornography. And lastly no, Project 2025 might not explicitly state same-sex marriage is on the chopping block (but duh.) Conservative justices on the SCOTUS have already signaled their intention to overturn Lawrence and Obgerfell using the same rationale they just used to overturn Roe v. Wade. The makeup of SCOTUS is already 6-3. You wanna make it a full 9-0? No. Trump cannot appoint any more far-right justices to the court. Anyone telling you that Project 2025 is good for the gays or that it won’t be that bad should be shouted down. It’s nothing but a plan to take LGBT folks 40 years back in time, to a time a lot of us lived through, that sucked. So, yes. pearl clutching is warranted.
Eternal.Cowboy
@daveku69
You either didn’t read it or you lack any sort of reading comprehension skills, probably both.
Page 481 makes multiple references to a marriage being defined as a union between a one man and one woman who are not related.
Also, LGBT, LGBTQ and LGBTQ+ show up on 11 pages with respect to multiple polices. None of them positive for LGBTQ individuals.
I’m guessing you never read the thing but simply repeated some talking point you picked up along the way. And seriously, how hard would it have been to do a few minutes of research before repeating complete nonsense.
Baz01
Meanwhile, as Punkin’ Head’s garden gnome bangs on about his ‘service in the Marines’ as being a good enough reason to elect him, just know – he joined in 2003 as a combat correspondant (military journalist), and then moved to Media Relations before leaving in 2007. If he’s trying to portray himself in heroic terms for actions of derring-do, he’s about as honest as his boss – and significantly behind the real military actions (and subsequent work for Veterans) of, say, Pete Buttigieg, the current Secretary of Transportation.
abfab
Bonus points. Failure, 69.
War On Free Speech
Some in our community can’t seem to get enough “0ppression”.
abfab
You are NOT in our community.
Eternal.Cowboy
Abfab –
I think he meant straight people. He obviously isn’t an LGBTQ+ person. And to that extend I agree, his community cannot get enough of oppressing.
GayEGO
Vote for pro-LGBTQ supporters like Kamala Harris, not Trump/Vance!
dman
Anyone else notice that Vance often wears a LOT of eyeliner? I’m guessing he thinks it makes him look more dynamic when he gives public speeches, but instead he looks ridiculous.
Jimmynj
JD Vance, like Trump, is a total fraud. Trump probably selected him for that reason and because they could share makeup. They should never be in the White House. Anyone smart will realize that.