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Media Faces Reckoning After Helping Trump Downplay Project 2025 on Campaign Trail
"A Trump denial is not a fact," said one media critic.
Oct 03, 2025
As President Donald Trump openly embraces Project 2025, mainstream media outlets are facing criticism for their role in helping him downplay his ties to the wildly unpopular far-right governing playbook in the lead-up to his reelection last year.
After she became the Democratic nominee in July, former Vice President Kamala Harris made the Heritage Foundation's over 900-page manifesto for “the next conservative president” central to her case against Trump during the 2024 election, often referring to it as "Trump's Project 2025."
She and other Democrats warned that if he retook power, he would swiftly enact many of its most extreme and unpopular proposals and dramatically expand executive power while doing it.
Among those proposals were steep cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the "mass deportations" of millions of immigrants, the elimination of the Department of Education, new restrictions on abortions, the gutting of climate protections, and the replacement of career civil servants with political appointees, among many others.
Democrats amplified the plan's danger at the Democratic National Convention and in campaign ads, and Trump began to distance himself from the platform. Despite the fact that as many as 140 people who'd worked in his first administration—including Paul Dans, Heritage's director of Project 2025—had a hand in its creation, Trump said: "I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it."
This was demonstrably untrue, even at the time. Media Matters for America dug up a clip from as far back as May 2023 of Dans stating that "President Trump's very bought in with this," speaking of the program.
Project 2025 was almost inconceivably unpopular. An NBC News poll from September 2024 showed that while 57% of registered voters viewed the plan negatively, just 4% viewed it positively.
But in the critical months leading up to the election, many media outlets took Trump's denial at face value, publishing fact checks and other commentary that painted Democrats' warnings about his connection to the plan as alarmist or misleading.
Responding to a social media post in July stating that "Trump has made his authoritarian intentions quite clear with his Project 2025 plan," a fact check by USA Today rated the statement "false," because, as the headline said, "Project 2025 is an effort by the Heritage Foundation, not Donald Trump."
In September, after Harris confronted Trump about Project 2025 at the first and only debate between the two, the paper published another fact-check with the headline: "Harris repeats claim that Project 2025 is Trump's plan. That's still not right."
In response to Harris' claim during the debate that Project 2025 was "a detailed and dangerous plan... that the former president intends on implementing if he were elected,” Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, whose coverage received a fair bit of criticism during the 2024 cycle, reported in bold text that "Project 2025 is not an official campaign document."
A CNN fact check of the Harris campaign's social media in September remarked that one account "frequently invokes Project 2025," before caveating that "Project 2025 is not Trump’s initiative, and he has said he disagrees with some of its proposals."
In an October interview on CBS's "Face the Nation," anchor Norah O'Donnell, Harris attempted to warn about Project 2025, before O'Donnell responded: "You know that Donald Trump has disavowed Project 2025. He says that is not his campaign plan."
After nine months back in power, the website Project 2025 Tracker estimates that Trump has already implemented approximately 48% of the objectives outlined in the policy document.
In addition to his key campaign promises many of his second administration's policies are highly specific to Project 2025, such as his pledge to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), his efforts to privatize the National Weather Service (NWS), his reconfiguration of Title X funding to promote pregnancy, and his elimination of the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Trump is no longer hiding his connection to Project 2025, having brought in many of its hiring picks and authors to staff his administration almost immediately after his victory last November.
This week, he began to boast about it openly. As his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director, Russ Vought, one of Project 2025's architects, began using the current government shutdown to unilaterally cut off funding to infrastructure projects in blue states and cities, Trump lauded him as "he of PROJECT 2025 Fame."
"This was always the plan," Harris responded on social media.
While many commentators expressed outrage that Trump blatantly lied about his connections to Project 2025, others dredged up old clips of newspapers and anchors taking him at his word.
"All those 2024 media fact checks that said, 'Donald Trump and the Trump campaign deny any connection to Project 2025' look pretty ridiculous right now," said MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski. "A Trump denial is not a fact. You just used his lies to 'debunk' a reality that was obvious to anyone paying attention."
Mehdi Hasan, the founder of the independent media company Zeteo, highlighted the CBS interview, saying Trump's embrace of Project 2025 was "embarrassing not just for Norah O'Donnell but a whole host of leading American anchors and reporters who echoed Trump’s false denials."
"Nothing showed the difference between mainstream and independent media better than the response to Trump’s obvious lie about not knowing anything about Project 2025," said David Pepper, author of the book Saving Democracy: A User's Manual. "Most mainstream media started fact-checking those who claimed a connection to be somehow false. Others 'both sides'ed' it. Far more in independent media called it out as a whopping lie."
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As Musk Attacks CFPB, GOP Lawmakers Take Aim at Overdraft Rule—A Gift to Wall Street
"This is just the latest broken promise from Republicans, who have used their short time in power to already cater to special interests over hardworking Americans," said one watchdog leader.
Feb 18, 2025
A U.S. watchdog group on Tuesday slammed Republicans in Congress for trying to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's overdraft rule as U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk target the CFPB as a whole.
The Accountable.US statement came in response to Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) recently introducing a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to overturn the rule that capped most overdraft fees at $5, which was finalized in December, near the end of the former President Joe Biden's term.
"Overdraft fees affect a huge portion of American families with 17% of households with checking accounts paying overdraft or [nonsufficient funds] fees in 2023," Accountable.US noted. "This action would open the door for $35 overdraft fees—a decision that would cost American households an average of $225 each year."
The watchdog's executive director, Tony Carrk, declared that "undoing the CFPB's overdraft fee rule is a gift to big banks and a gut punch to the wallets of millions of Americans across the country."
"Deceitful and excessive overdraft fees cost Americans billions of dollars every year, but the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress don't seem to care any longer about lowering costs for Americans now that they're in charge," he continued. "This is just the latest broken promise from Republicans, who have used their short time in power to already cater to special interests over hardworking Americans."
When the Republican chairs introduced their CRA resolution last week, Scott called the Biden-era CFPB rule an example of the "pursuit of political headlines over sound policies," and Hill described it "midnight rulemaking" and "another form of government price controls that hurt consumers who deserve financial protections and greater choice."
Meanwhile, when the CFPB finalized the rule, the agency said that it "took action to close an outdated overdraft loophole that exempted overdraft loans from lending laws." At the time, the bureau was still directed by Biden appointee Rohit Chopra, who highlighted that large banks' exploitation of the loophole had "drained billions of dollars from Americans' deposit accounts."
The rule "was scheduled to become effective in October," but "because of acting Director Russ Vought's unlawful order stalling all CFPB work, the effective date has been suspended," The American Prospect reported Monday. "If Congress passes the CRA resolution, the overdraft rule could not come back in any 'substantially similar' form. So it matters if congressional Republicans decide to support allowing banks to impose additional junk fees worth billions of dollars."
The outlet also pointed out that "because CRA resolutions cannot be stopped by a filibuster, they represent some of the most likely legislative actions of the early Trump term," given Republicans' narrow majorities in Congress."
It's not just the rule that's in jeopardy; the entire agency is at risk. Trump and Musk, the leader of the president's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—though perhaps not on paper—are working to gut the federal workforce and slash spending, and they have the CFPB in their crosshairs.
An agreement reached Friday in federal court halted mass firings at the CFPB and barred the bureau and its temporary leader, Vought—who also leads the Office of Management and Budget—from purging data or defunding the agency while the case moves forward. However, Trump and Musk are expected to continue their effort.
"The same billionaires trying to kill the CFPB are the ones who profit off predatory loans, sky-high fees, and financial scams that target young people," Corryn G. Freeman, executive director of the youth-focused Future Coalition, said Monday. "The CFPB should be strengthened, not eliminated. If Musk and his allies succeed in gutting this agency, it will be open season on young consumers with no one left to protect them."
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'So Much for Lowering Costs': Fury Over Musk's Death Wish for CFPB That Returned Over $20 Billion to Consumers
"The richest man in the world wants to shut down an agency that keeps people like him from ripping off the rest of us."
Feb 08, 2025
Defenders of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that has returned tens of billions of dollars to duped and defrauded U.S. consumers expressed outrage overnight and into Saturday after the independent agency was declared deceased by billionaire Elon Musk and its operations were handed over to the chief architect of the far-right Project 2025 Russell Vought.
Vought, who earlier this week was confirmed as head of the Office of Management and Budget by Senate Republicans, was named acting director of the CFPB by President Donald Trump, according to various reports.
The appointment of the far-right ideologue came less than a day after reports emerged that members of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were granted access to key CFPB systems and Musk himself posted to his online social media X that the agency should "RIP," suggesting it was in the process of being dismantled or, in his mind, already killed.
"Since its creation, the Bureau has returned $21 billion to people's wallets by fighting against illegal financial charges, junk fees, debts, and fraud," said Mike Calhoun, president of the nonpartisan Center for Responsible Lending, in a statement on Saturday. Now, when people are already struggling to pay higher prices for necessities like eggs and milk, the Trump administration appears to have decided to deepen the pain by directly taking aim at the agency that helps keep our money safe."
"When people are already struggling to pay higher prices for necessities like eggs and milk, the Trump administration appears to have decided to deepen the pain by directly taking aim at the agency that helps keep our money safe."
"'Let them eat debt' is not a strategy for making America great again," Calhoun added, "and weakening the CFPB certainly isn't the way to keep working families, our financial markets, or our economy strong."
Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which challenges corporate encroachment on the common good, said, "Obviously this isn't about 'efficiency.' It's about dismantling law enforcement that protects Americans from corporate power."
Congressional Democrats also reacted with contempt to Musk's message and the news that the agency's systems—like those of other agencies DOGE has put its hands on—were under threat.
"Here is the richest man in the world bragging about eliminating an agency that has delivered $21 billion back to working-class families since its inception," said Democrats on the House Committee on Financial Services, led by Ranking Member Maxine Waters of California. "Even most Republicans want the CFPB to continue protecting them from being ripped off by abusive big banks and predatory lenders."
"Here are the FACTS: 81% of voters, both Republicans and Democrats, support the CFPB and want the agency to continue its work," said Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), also a member of the committee. "Even so, Trump has moved to freeze the CFPB to take money out of YOUR pocket to line those of his billionaire friends."
In a letter sent to the CFPB on Friday—addressed to the previous acting director, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose first act of business was reportedly to order a halt of "all meaningful work"—Waters, Vargas, and 79 other Democratic members of the House said they were "deeply alarmed and troubled that you appear to be launching the Trump Administration's plan to contravene the will of Congress and unlawfully 'delete' this popular consumer watchdog that enjoys the broad bipartisan support of four out of five Americans."
According to the letter:
... we understand that you have ordered staff to halt all meaningful work of the CFPB, including ordering staff to stop investigating violations of consumer financial protection laws or settling enforcement actions, basically letting bad actors off the hook. We also understand that you have arbitrarily ordered the suspension of all CFPB rules that have yet to take effect, which would delay billions of dollars in savings and credit opportunities for consumers, if not rob them entirely.
We urge you to immediately rescind what appears to be an illegal stop work order and allow the public servants at the CFPB to get back to work for the American people as required by law.
As of this writing, the CFPB's homepage (www.consumerfinance.gov) prominently displayed a 404 error message, though portions of the site appeared to be active.
In a Saturday statement, the Democrats on the House Finance Committee said the 404 image on the CFPB website was intentionally "deceptive," calling it "a brazen attempt to fool consumers and the public about the status" of the agency.
"As of this moment, links and pages are still up and functional on the website," the statement said, "including the Consumer Complaint portal and database and Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) database. Various aspects of the CFPB's web content is required by statute to be published and available on the CFPB's website."
"Let's be clear: the people cheering this the loudest are scammers and people who don't want you to keep your hard-earned dollars. So much for lowering costs."
Nadine Chabrier, counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, said the "deeply troubling" developments at the agency will "undermine the CFPB's mission to protect consumers from financial misconduct" of various kinds.
"CFPB has returned more than $20,000,000,000 to consumers since it was founded," said Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.) on Friday evening in response to Musk's tweet. "Let's be clear: the people cheering this the loudest are scammers and people who don't want you to keep your hard-earned dollars. So much for lowering costs."
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