July 6 (UPI) — President Joe Biden is seeking to tie his rival Donald Trump to the controversial Project 2025 agenda in an attempt to warn voters of what is at stake in November.
Trump has claimed no association with the list of priorities put forth by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” the former president posted on Truth Social. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Biden’s campaign, however, seeks to associate Trump with the conservative playbook, which in its introduction pledges to “dismantle the administrative state” rails against abortion and denounces gender-inclusive language as terms “used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights.”
“Donald Trump is lying again now. He’s trying to hide his connections to his allies’ extreme Project 2025 agenda,” the Biden campaign said in a statement per CNN. “The only problem? It was written for him, by those closest to him. Project 2025 should scare every single American.”
“It would give Trump limitless power over our daily lives and let him use the presidency to enact ‘revenge’ on his enemies, ban abortion nationwide and punish women who have an abortion, and gut the checks and balances that make America the greatest democracy in the world. It’s extreme and dangerous.”
In light of Biden’s lackluster performance at the first presidential debate, his campaign has sought to shift concerns away from his fitness in office and toward his contrasts with Trump.
Trump’s campaign for months has worked to emphasize that Project 2025 is not the campaign’s official policy platform.
Project 2025 is built off the Heritage Foundation’s longstanding Mandate for Leadership, which the group bragged has been “highly influential” in presidential administrations going back to Ronald Regan.
The Heritage Foundation said the previous Trump administration embraced nearly two-thirds of its policy proposals within its first year.
One of the project’s priorities includes reimplementing Schedule F, which would reclassify thousands of workers to make them subject to swifter firing. Trump in 2020 issued an executive order on Schedule F, which Biden revoked after he took office.