White House correspondent Maggie Haberman on Thursday said GOP lawmakers are “quietly frustrated” by President Trump’s references to the conservative policy initiative known as Project 2025 during the government shutdown.
In recent days, the president has touted a meeting with White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, who co-authored the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The 920-page leadership mandate outlined a legislative agenda that focuses on mass deportations, rolling back reproductive rights and removing diversity, equity and inclusion language from federal government, among other goals.
“I will say that even some Republicans were quietly frustrated by President Trump’s social media post, highlighting Russ Vought’s connection to Project 2025. Even though the notion that the president had no idea what Project 2025 was during the campaign was absurd, or that he didn’t know the people who were involved with it was absurd,” Haberman, of The New York Times, said during an appearance on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins.”
“It was not actually his campaign’s platform … but there was overlap between his campaign’s advisers, or some of their advisers, and the people who worked on Project 2025,” she told host Kaitlan Collins.
Haberman said polling showed the initiative is “objectively unpopular,” noting this was the reasoning behind the Trump campaign's attempt to distance itself from connection to the conservative playbook.
“Now, he’s just openly talking about it, and it is just providing fresh fodder for Democrats, who the White House had been trying to blame for the fact that the shutdown exists in the first place,” Haberman said. “This complicates that."
Trump has pledged to use the shutdown to ensure federal agencies undergo mass layoffs while promising to cut programs backed by Democrats.
“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump wrote in a Thursday Truth Social post.
“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way of wanting to, quietly and quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he added.
In a Friday video posted to Truth Social, Trump shared a AI-generated clip depicting Vought as the grim reaper who “wields the pen, the funds and the brain,” signaling the OMB director's ability to make swift cuts to federal funding.
The president has recently taken to social media to scold Democrats for the shutdown alleging their requests to extend Affordable Care Act premium subsidies and reverse cuts to Medicaid are “ridiculous."
Democrats and unions have both decried plans for a reduction in force amid the standoff between elected leaders.
“The administration has threatened to inflict punishment on, and further traumatize, federal employees throughout the nation,” the American Federation of Government Employees wrote in a lawsuit brought alongside several other democracy groups and unions.
“The cynical use of federal employees as a pawn in Congressional deliberations should be declared unlawful," the complaint reads.
Source: The Hill - News
