As Minnesota’s top Democrats continue to weigh in on whether President Joe Biden should withdraw from his re-election bid against former President Donald Trump, they are also doing their part to market a new-ish, seemingly coordinated political attack on the Republican challenger for the White House.
On Thursday, a number of DFL politicians and allies took to social media or held press conferences to issue public statements criticizing “Donald Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda to drag our country backwards.”
DFL Party Chair Ken Martin and Patrick Gage, Biden’s field director in Minnesota, co-organized a press conference at the State Capitol on Thursday morning as a sort of preemptive rebuttal to Trump’s nomination acceptance speech later that evening.
At the press conference, Martin was joined by Gage, Attorney General Keith Ellison and AFL-CIO Minnesota President Bernie Burnham, where they labeled a 2023 Heritage Foundation document “Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda,” which Martin claimed is an “authoritarian blueprint” and Gage said if implemented “would be a disaster for Minnesotans.”
The day prior, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz co-led a press conference for the Biden campaign outside the RNC in Milwaukee, where he stood behind a podium emblazoned with the phrase, “Trump’s Project 2025: Ban Abortion, Punish Women.”
There’s one problem though: Trump has said multiple times this month that he isn’t familiar with such an agenda and does not support it.
Trump: ‘I know nothing about Project 2025’
The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., published the 900-page playbook-style document last year and officially calls it “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” and the “2025 Presidential Transition Project.”
“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote in a social media post just days before the Republican National Convention kicked off in Milwaukee last week. “I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it.”
“The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part. By now, after all of these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERYTHING!”
While critics of that statement point to the fact that some former Trump administration officials helped co-write the document, which was published in 2023 and lays out a list of priorities should a Republican win the White House this November, Trump has consistently distanced himself from the work.
Earlier this month Trump reacted to Biden surrogates who began tying him to the Project 2025 document when he wrote in a public statement, “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.”
Despite that, DFL-aligned political action committees have continued to allege that Trump is a ringleader of Project 2025.
On Friday, Alliance for a Better Minnesota posted a seven second video clip of Trump’s RNC speech, using it to falsely allege that he has endorsed Project 2025 and plans to implement it if he were elected president in November.
“Remember last night when Trump once again committed to enacting the dangerous policies of #Project2025, which include rolling back reproductive freedoms nationwide & giving huge tax breaks to corporations?” Alliance for a Better Minnesota wrote in a post on X the morning after Trump’s speech.
But in the former president’s more than 90-minute speech, Trump never once mentioned Project 2025. Here’s the full section of that moment in Trump’s speech, in which it’s clear he is referencing his party’s platform, which spans about 16 pages:
“This week, the entire Republican Party has formally adopted an agenda for America’s renewal. And you saw that agenda and it’s very short compared to the long, boring, meaningless agendas of the past, including the Democrats. They write these things that are hundreds of pages long and they never read them after they’re done. In their case fortunately, they don’t read them because they’re pretty bad. It’s a series of bold promises that we will swiftly implement when you give us a Republican House.”
While many of Minnesota’s highest profile DFLers continue to attempt to tie Trump to Project 2025, Minnesota-based political commentators like Michele Tafoya are paying close attention.
“The Minnesota DFL just sent me this fundraising email,” Tafoya, a former national sports reporter and conservative podcast host, wrote Friday in a social media post. “(T)hey are using ‘Project 2025’ as the scare tactic. I would urge my dem friends (yes, I have many) not to fall for this BS. #Project2025Farce”
Hank Long
Hank Long is a journalism and communications professional whose writing career includes coverage of the Minnesota legislature, city and county governments and the commercial real estate industry. Hank received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where he studied journalism, and his law degree at the University of St. Thomas. The Minnesota native lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and four children. His dream is to be around when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.
