Exclusive | Conservative war of words erupts over Project 2025, with Trump transition team vowing not to tap radioactive recruits and critics saying project is too big to fail
NEW YORK — The head of Donald Trump’s transition team has insisted a prospective Republican administration won’t even consider recruits from the “radioactive” Project 2025 database — prompting an insider to push back by saying the Heritage Foundation-led initiative has 18,000 Republicans involved and is “too big to fail” as a result.“Heritage, because of Project 2025, is radioactive,” Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick told The Post Tuesday night in the spin room ahead of the CBS News vice presidential debate.“As in, none, zero, radioactive.So that’s a clear position.”The Trump team has claimed publicly for months it will not tap personnel vetted and trained under Project 2025 to fill executive branch positions, in part due to Democrats and the media accusing the policy book of being too radical on issues like abortion.But one former member of the Trump presidential personnel office (PPO) told The Post that Lutnick’s blanket rejection was “bizarre,” claiming that “it would be impossible to do a transition without including Project 2025 people.”Lutnick’s team has “already reached out” to people affiliated with Project 2025, the source went on, arguing there is no possibility of staffing a second Trump administration “unless he’s going outside of the conservative movement.”The former PPO staffer added that the Project 2025 database includes Republicans from a wide-ranging list of different groups, including Turning Point USA and “state legislative staff.”The source also insisted that Lutnick may just be pushing one message “publicly” to take the heat off the Republican campaign.Project 2025 is continuing to host events and market itself as giving a boost to ambitious GOP officials.
The project’s website, as of Wednesday morning, still prompted recruits to fill out a questionnaire “if you would like to be considered for positions in a presidential Administration.”The disparity between Lutnick’s claim an...