Fact check: Harris campaign falsely claims 2021 video shows Vance endorsing Project 2025
Project 2025, an effort to lay out an agenda for a potential second Donald Trump presidency, was organized by The Heritage Foundation think tank and developed along with a variety of other conservative organizations.
The 920-page Project 2025 blueprint for right-wing policies and a radical reshaping of the executive branch have been a central focus of Democratic attacks during the 2024 election campaign.
On the social media platform X on Saturday, the Harris campaign posted a video of Vance being interviewed by conservative media outlet The Federalist. The Harris campaign account @KamalaHQ, which has more than one million followers, described the video like this: “JD Vance endorses Project 2025: ‘We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power ... I don’t think there’s a compromise that we’re gonna come with ... Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re gonna keep losing.’”
Facts First: The Harris campaign’s claim that the video shows Vance endorsing Project 2025 is false. The video does not show Vance talking about Project 2025 at all. In fact, Project 2025 had not even been created at the time Vance made these comments in May 2021. The initiative was launched by The Heritage Foundation in April 2022, and its policy recommendations were released in April 2023.
The Harris campaign, which declined to comment for this article, did not acknowledge in the social media post that Vance’s comments were from more than three years ago.
A Harris campaign official told CNN last week – when Harris herself inaccurately described some of the contents of the Project 2025 policy document – that the campaign “made a deliberate decision to brand all of Trump’s policies” as “Project 2025,” since they believe “it has stuck with voters.”
No broad endorsement from Vance or Trump
There is no doubt that Trump and Vance have extensive ties to the people behind Project 2025. CNN previously reported that at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025. Vance wrote the foreward for a forthcoming book by The Heritage Foundation president and Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts.
But Roberts was not yet working for Heritage at the time of the May 2021 Vance comments the Harris campaign posted on Saturday, and contrary to the Harris campaign’s claim, Vance has not issued a broad public endorsement of the initiative itself. Vance said earlier in July, days before he became Trump’s running mate, that Project 2025 includes “some good ideas” and “some things that I disagree with” – adding that “most importantly, it has no affiliation with the Trump campaign.”
Trump has called unspecified Project 2025 proposals “seriously extreme” and “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” but has also said “many of the points are fine.”
The ongoing debates in the 2024 election campaign have led to intense scrutiny of Project 2025, a controversial blueprint for right-wing policies proposed by conservative organizations like The Heritage Foundation.
The Democratic Party has criticized Project 2025 as a radical agenda that aims to significantly reshape the executive branch, if brought to fruition in a potential second term for President Trump.
