Tipsheet
Premium

Did Democrats Just Light a Bunch of Money on Fire With These Project 2025 Ads?

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 17, 2024 12:00 PM

It cannot be said enough that former and potentially future President Donald Trump is not connected to Project 2025, which is an effort from the Heritage Foundation. That hasn't stopped the Democrats from repeatedly tying Project 2025 to Trump, and now his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who was just formally nominated on Monday.

One of the many posts over X and statements against Vance from Democrats on Monday mentioned Project 2025, but that was just the beginning. 

Subsequent posts connecting not just Trump, but also now Vance, to Project 2025, keep pouring in. 

There's also how on Tuesday morning, Democrats held a press conference in Milwaukee, where they also tried to hammer home such a false connection. 

The press conference included speakers such as Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), AFL–CIO President Liz Shuler, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, and Biden-Harris 2024 Deputy Campaign Manager Quentin Fulks. The DNC War Room sent out an email highlighting significant statements from such speakers, as well as referring to Project 2025 as the "Trump-Vance Project 2025 Agenda." This one was billed as claiming Trump and Vance had an "Agenda to Terminate Health Care, Gut Social Security, and Destroy Unions."

Recommended

Matt Gaetz Withdraws Attorney General Nomination Matt Vespa
Why Again Do We Still Have a Special Relationship With the Tyrannical UK? Kurt Schlichter

Wednesday's press conference involved Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX), and Amanda Zurawski, who sued a Texas pro-life law. Such a press conference focused heavily on the Democrats' pet issue of abortion, which may matter considerably to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other elected Democrats, but not so much to voters. A Cygnal poll from last month even indicated it doesn't even look to be a top issue for Democratic voters.

Just as Democrats are prone to lying about Project 2025, they've also taken Trump's comments on abortion out of context and now look to be doing the same for Vance. Both Trump and Vance are pro-life, while also regarding the abortion issue as one best left to the states. That hasn't stopped the Democrats from repeatedly claiming Trump, and now the Trump-Vance ticket, would sign a national abortion ban. 

One press release described Wednesday's press conference as one where the speakers would discuss "J.D. Vance’s Project 2025 plan to rip away reproductive freedoms, ban abortion nationwide, and threaten access to IVF and contraception."

Other than cursory mentions, the RNC hasn't focused very much on the abortion issue, and the platform has been watered down in that area. This has certainly led to mixed reactions from pro-lifers, but in the context of this discussion it's worth reminding that Republicans are far more pro-life than Democrats, and it serves as a blow to the credibility of pro-abortion Democrats looking to go after Republicans. 

That wasn't the only abortion-minded focus of the day, though. The DNC on Wednesday put out a press release on a new ad campaign, also claiming that the "facts" supposedly say that Trump and Vance "are anti-choice extremists whose second term agenda, Project 2025, would ban abortion nationwide, with or without the support of Congress," for which there is no evidence. A statement from DNC Spokesperson Aida Ross doubled down on such a claim. 

The DNC had also announced an ad buy campaign on Tuesday, with 16 billboard ads and a mobile billboard ad mentioning Project 2025 to connect to the Trump-Vance ticket.

"The Trump-Vance ticket is running on an extreme Project 2025 agenda – and the American people deserve to know that they’re planning to rip away their health care, gut Social Security, strip their reproductive freedoms, and shill for big corporations on the backs of working families. If Trump were trying to distance himself from Project 2025, then he probably shouldn’t have chosen as his running mate the man who just days ago said that the extreme blueprint is full of ‘good ideas.’ The more the American people learn about Trump and Vance, and their terrifying Project 2025 agenda, the clearer the choice will be to choose President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ vision that protects our basic freedoms come November," the DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd claimed in a statement. 

Saying something contains "good ideas" in no way means a candidate is connected to the project. Further, Floyd's statement dishonestly leaves out how not only have Trump and Heritage indicated they're not affiliated, but fact-checkers have also confirmed this to be the case.

As Madeline covered on Monday, Trump reaffirmed how he was not involved with Project 2025 in an interview with Fox News' Harris Faulkner that was conducted on Saturday, hours before he was shot. In that interview, he also said Project 2025 went "way too far."

DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison released statements on Monday and Tuesday night, about the RNC and their themes, but it's doubtful Harrison even watched the convention. Both statements referenced Project 2025. 

"The truth is that Trump, J.D. Vance, and their MAGA allies’ extreme Project 2025 platform would devastate working families with skyrocketing inflation after Trump’s last tax scam incentivized outsourcing and let billionaires pay a lower tax rate than the middle class for the first time ever. This November, voters will reject the Trump-Vance ticket’s extreme and expensive MAGAnomics agenda that puts the ultra-rich ahead of the rest of us — and reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris, who are building the economy from the bottom up and middle out," Harrison's statement from Monday claimed in part. 

During both Monday and Tuesday's evening sessions, multiple speakers pointed out how poorly the economy has fared for Americans under Biden, with at least 65 percent of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck. 

Tuesday's statement about Day 2 of the evening session of the RNC was even more unhinged. It too referenced Project 2025. As it claimed:

“The RNC focused on crime tonight so perhaps they should’ve had their nominee and convicted felon Donald Trump deliver his keynote address early. The MAGA extremists on stage made clear why crime skyrocketed under Donald Trump’s leadership and why they cannot be trusted to make our communities safer if given a second shot in the White House. 

“Every speaker on stage tonight backs Trump and J.D. Vance’s dangerous Project 2025 agenda to defund law enforcement, put partisan politics over border security, and pardon violent January 6 insurrectionists. 

“In sharp contrast, President Biden has provided strong, steady leadership and delivered for the American people, cleaning up after Trump’s failures. It was Joe Biden who brought the violent crime rate down to a near 50-year low after it skyrocketed under Trump. He worked across the aisle to deliver common sense gun safety reforms as Trump and MAGA Republicans cave to the NRA, and he took action to strengthen our border security after Trump ordered his allies to tank a tough and fair, bipartisan border deal. The Republicans can try to lie and obfuscate their dangerous Project 2025 agenda, but Americans see right through it and will reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris, who have a real record to run on of making our communities safer and more secure.” 

That opening paragraph makes no sense. The Democrats are also one to talk, given that they're in disarray over whether to nominate Biden early via a virtual convention, or even to keep him on the ticket. 

If anyone who has been looking to "defund law enforcement" and "put partisan politics over border security," it would be the Democratic Party. Many speakers, including Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, a former Democrat, spoke about the left's crusade to defund the police. Other speakers also spoke about how open borders under the Biden administration have ravaged communities and victimized innocent Americans with violent crime and fentanyl overdoses.

Not only did Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speak about such victims, including 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was, like him, from Houston and a victim of rape and murder, allegedly by two illegal immigrants but family members of victims of crime were there to speak, like Michael Morin, the brother of Rachel Morin, who was raped and murdered while on a trail in Maryland. The accused is also an illegal immigrant.

As speakers also reminded, Harris was not only designated as the border czar, she's claimed Americans will have "reimagining how we do public safety in America," and helped bail out Black Lives Matters protesters while on the ticket in 2020. 

Further, to say that crime has gone down under the Biden administration, is to ignore how lacking the data is, with major cities like New York and Los Angeles not even sending data for the new standards under the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) in 2021. 

The personal, human connection to far-left DAs was on display on Tuesday night as well. One of the most powerful speakers, Madeline Brame, spoke out against how her son's killers received leniency in New York City, thanks to Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. 

Again, did Harrison even watch the convention he was lambasting?

It was also an objectively bad border bill that Republicans killed in Congress, multiple times, while the House passed actual border legislation over a year ago with HR 2, the Secure the Border Act. 

Democrats aren't just going after the Trump-Vance ticket, either. Last week, Ben Shapiro came before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on "Collusion in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media [GARM]." During his time, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) ended up going after Shapiro's religious beliefs on marriage as part of his questioning wondering whether or not he agreed with Project 2025.

"I think, like President Trump, I haven't looked all that deeply at Project 2025," Shapiro said when answering questions from Swalwell. "But it seems that Democrats on this committee--sort of like Peter Pan and Tinker Bell--if they say 'Project 2025' enough, their presidential candidate becomes alive again."