Former President Donald Trump took a 45-minute private flight alongside Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in April 2022, The Washington Post reported this week, citing people familiar with the trip.
Trump has repeatedly denied any connection with the Project 2025 camp, going so far as to say in a July social media post that he has “no idea who is in charge” of the ultra-conservative playbook that seeks to overhaul the executive branch.
The Post obtained and published a photo of Trump and Roberts smiling and posing on a private plane, undercutting Trump’s denials.
According to the outlet, Trump and Roberts flew together to a Heritage Foundation conference, where Trump gave a keynote speech alluding to the then-forthcoming Project 2025.
Neither Trump nor the Heritage Foundation immediately responded to Business Insider’s request for comment.
At the time of the flight in 2022, the Heritage Foundation had not yet put the finishing touches on Project 2025. A Heritage official told The Post that Robert raised the topic with Trump on the flight, but the former president appeared uninterested.
People familiar with the trip told the outlet that Heritage chartered the flight because Trump’s private plane was being refurbished at the time. The men flew from Palm Beach, Florida, to Amelia Island, where the foundation’s annual conference is held.
The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Washington, DC, which is behind the controversial 922-page Project 2025 playbook.
Project 2025 is, in essence, a roadmap to enacting extreme conservative policies if Trump wins in 2024.
“The time is short, and conservatives need a plan,” reads the Project 2025 website. “The project will create a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new Administration to bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies.”
Some of its extreme proposals include axing the Department of Education and its “woke-dominated system of public schools,” stopping the FBI from fighting misinformation and disinformation, and ending the “war on fossil fuels.”
Trump has denied any connection with the project. However, the Heritage Foundation was one of the sponsors for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, where Trump was nominated as the party’s presidential nominee.
The former president called the people behind Project 2025 part of the “radical right” during a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 20.
“Some of them, I know who they are, but they’re very very conservative,” he said at the rally. “They’re sort of the opposite of the radical left. You have the radical left, and you have the radical right.”
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