Originally at yahoo.com
One of the key architects of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 project says he’d gladly join his compatriots in the Trump administration—even after he was pushed out of his role over widespread public backlash to the controversial conservative agenda.
Speaking to Politico in an interview published Sunday, Project 2025 director Paul Dans—a lawyer who helped draft the playbook that is seemingly being implemented by President Donald Trump and his administration—reflected on his ouster and took a victory lap now that his program is becoming a reality.
“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Dans told Politico. “It’s not going to be the easiest road to hoe going forward. The deep state is going to get its breath back. But the way that they’ve been able to move and upset the orthodoxy, and at the same time really capture the imagination of the people, I think portends a great four years.”
While Dans repeatedly stressed that Project 2025 was “done outside of President Trump” and was merely drafted as a template for any conservative president who would “seize the day,” he still acknowledged that “directionally” Trump 2.0 and Project 2025 “have a lot in common.”
“I’m not saying that,” Dans reiterated when asked by Politico if the Trump administration and Project 2025 were “one and the same.”
“I’m saying that directionally, they have a lot in common, but so do great minds,” he continued. “We had hoped, those of us who worked putting together Project 2025, that the next conservative president would seize the day, but Trump is seizing every minute of every hour. I’m not sure that you’d be able to implement Project 2025 without Donald Trump’s ability to bring people together and Elon Musk’s ability to focus the direction of the work.”
The lawyer, who now resides in Charleston, South Carolina, also reflected on the program’s fallout during the 2024 presidential campaign—after the Democratic party warned of the dangers of Project 2025’s agenda.
The focus on the once-obscure project turned it into a major theme in the 2024 election, one the Republican Party later sought to separate itself from.
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly sought to clarify that he was not involved with it.
“One thing that happened with Project 2025 was that we got caught in this maelstrom of misinformation, and at some point, the left decided that they were all in on Project 2025. That turned out to be one of the great political miscalculations of all time,” Dans said.
He quickly became the face of Project 2025, and after it became a political flashpoint, a scapegoat for its failures. He resigned from Heritage in July, and subsequently criticized Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita for “malpractice.”
When asked by Politico if he regretted the remark, Dans quipped, “Well, as Frank [Sinatra] would say, regrets I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.”
“Fake news is going to be fake news,” he continued when asked if he would have done more to distance himself and Heritage from the Trump campaign. “And, you know, going in and arguing with leftist misinformation agents on MSNBC is kind of a pointless endeavor, in my estimation. President Trump is the great communicator, and he was able to make those points strongly himself. And, that said, what we had hoped would happen has happened. So I can’t imagine how anything could end really any better.”
He went on to share that although he’s busy at work now, “should President Trump or his team need me, I will gladly answer the call.”
“I always think that the election is just the starting gate,” Dans continued. “Look, this is going to go on even for multiple administrations. I do one day aspire to rejoin public service. So I would say, ‘Watch this space.’”
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