David Marcus: Project 2025's lies reach Hershey's before the truth comes out

Hershey, Pennsylvania – Everywhere I go, in every corner of the country I have covered during this election, I hear threatening talk about Project 2025. Never mind that Donald Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025, never mind that the hoax he spreads is a lie engineered by the Democrats and the media, the fact is that it works.

In this town of 15,000 people known for its chocolate, I met Mark and his service dog. He's a military veteran and told me, “No one does research. People just believe what they're told,” adding, “I'm Gen X. We had actual libraries and I had to do research…”

Polls show Trump and Harris in a close race in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.

“Dewey Decimal Classification?” I interjected.

“Exactly, thank you,” he replied. “Now people just accept whatever Google spits out.”

Mark may have a point, because usually, and in fact most of the time, voters who talk to me about Project 2025 don't really understand what it is or what it entails.

Apart from a few experts at the Heritage Foundation, which spawned this Frankenstein-like policy project, perhaps no one on the planet knows what's inside.

“I was told this was some kind of list of rights, like abortion rights, that Republicans want to take away,” a woman in Virginia told me recently, citing a number of sources. When I pressed for details, she admitted she was relying on generalizations from Democrats and the media.

But far more important than what is or isn't in this 900-page document that's primarily personnel guidelines is that it has and never has had anything, at all, to do with Donald Trump.

Since Project 2025 became a key campaign issue, Trump has denied the plan at every turn, saying it has no impact on his presidency and, frankly, saying he doesn't even know what the plan contains.

Hershey's Mark says people need to research the issue and not just take what the media says.

So on what basis do Democrats and their inept media allies continue to try to wrap this burden around Donald's neck, but only through the worst half-truths and excuses our democratic system has to offer?

Foreword by J.D. Vance! Trump critics argue that not only did no one think he would be the vice presidential nominee in 2022, but that at a time when many thought Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, not Trump, would be the presidential nominee.

I was also told that dozens of former Trump administration officials were involved in the project. It is true that Heritage is a think tank, does not have a university draft system, does not hire through Indeed.com, and has former political policy officials working as staff.

A historical marker stands outside the former Hershey chocolate manufacturing plant in Hershey, Pennsylvania. (Bradley C. Bauer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

It's hard to criticize liberal think tanks like the Center for American Progress without also pointing fingers at former Obama and Biden staffers, but no one is saying Kamala Harris is going to hand over the keys to the federal government to them.

No, the claim that Trump has any affiliation or allegiance to Project 2025 is a complete lie and is perhaps the best argument as to why Trump should not accept a second debate with Kamala Harris, especially on CNN, which pushes this particular trope daily.

When Harris brought up nonsensical claims about Trump and the project during the first debate, the hosts didn't step in to fact-check her, as they have done so many times with Trump, making it seem as though the ABC hosts were complicit.

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The desperate and constant lies about Project 2025 by the Harris campaign and another wing of the Harris campaign known as the liberal press are happening precisely because Harris is unable to make a positive case for her candidacy.

Her fight against price gouging has failed, and on many issues she refuses to reveal where she stands other than to say she is more center-right than she was previously, and has refused to give serious interviews to clarify her positions.

So what's left of the campaign arsenal? Basically, VP candidate Tim Walz fixing old cars while lying about Project 2025.

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Sadly, from my travels and conversations, that's working. That's what frustrates Joe, a Gen Xer who voted for Trump. “It's the same as white supremacists and everything else,” he told me. “Trump condemns it over and over again, but it's never enough.”

Mark Twain said that a lie goes around the world before the truth puts on its pants. If that's true, Project 2025 is the heart boxer shorts of the 2024 election, and time is running out to cover this issue with truth.

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