> Trump said he was not going to follow the project 2025 plan.
He didn’t convincingly reject it, though, and his distancing was only convincing to people who were looking for an excuse to ignore it with the way he pretended not to know the people behind it when 31 of the 38 authors were members of his first administration, his campaign was in close contact throughout, and he certainly didn’t put much effort into rejecting specific policy proposals.
I think this is a case where different audiences got different messages. The hardcore base knew he was lying since it had all of their red meat issues, informed Democrats knew he was lying because actions speak louder than vague denials (e.g. if you don’t agree with someone’s policies, you wouldn’t let them have a role in your campaign and you’d be able to say what you’d do differently), but he gave the media and casual voters just enough to make it harder for Biden/Harris to land attacks which we now know were fully accurate.
He didn’t convincingly reject it, though, and his distancing was only convincing to people who were looking for an excuse to ignore it with the way he pretended not to know the people behind it when 31 of the 38 authors were members of his first administration, his campaign was in close contact throughout, and he certainly didn’t put much effort into rejecting specific policy proposals.
I think this is a case where different audiences got different messages. The hardcore base knew he was lying since it had all of their red meat issues, informed Democrats knew he was lying because actions speak louder than vague denials (e.g. if you don’t agree with someone’s policies, you wouldn’t let them have a role in your campaign and you’d be able to say what you’d do differently), but he gave the media and casual voters just enough to make it harder for Biden/Harris to land attacks which we now know were fully accurate.