Yahoo News Fact Check: It's True (Though Slightly Misleading) That Trump's Name Appears 312 Times in Project 2025 Document
Claim:
Former U.S. President Donald Trump's name is listed 312 times in Project 2025's policy document.
Rating:
What's True:
The word "Trump" appears 312 times in Project 2025's policy document "Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise." However …
What's False:
… in two instances, "trump" does not refer to the former president: Once it was used as a verb ("to trump") and in another instance as an adjective ("trumped-up"). Additionally, 158 mentions refer to the Trump administration rather than to Trump himself.
In early July 2024, a claim spread (archived) on social media that former U.S. President Donald Trump's name was listed 312 times in a document from Project 2025 — a conservative group's plan to reshape the government under a Republican administration. "Even though Donald Trump is Project 2025, he doesn't want people to find out. RT so people know about it," one post on the topic said.
(X user @anthony7andrews)
"Trump's name appears in the Project 2025 Manifesto 312 times, but he knows nothing about it," read an X post with more than 689,000 views.
Project 2025 has four pillars: a policy agenda outlined in a document titled "Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise," a personnel database of "conservatives from all walks of life to serve in the next conservative Administration," a training system for potential political appointees, and a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of a new administration.
We searched and found the word "Trump" does appear 312 times in the "Mandate for Leadership 2025" — the document outlining Project 2025 supporters' proposals.
(Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise)
However, in two instances, "trump" does not refer to the former U.S. president: Once it was used as a verb ("to trump") and in another instance as an adjective ("trumped-up"). Additionally, 158 mentions refer to the Trump administration rather than to Trump himself. Thus, we have rated this claim as being a "Mixture" of true and false.
Trump and Project 2025
Project 2025 is a policy initiative proposed by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation with the participation of many of Trump's allies. However, Trump has publicly stated he disagrees with some of Project 2025's recommendations and distanced himself from the initiative.
"I know nothing about Project 2025," Trump wrote in a July 5, 2024, post on Truth Social. "I have no idea who is behind it. 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."
Authors of 'Mandate for Leadership 2025'
The first 23 mentions of "Trump" in the "'Mandate for Leadership 2025" appear in the "Authors" section of the document, which details the authors' backgrounds and experience. Selected examples are below (emphasis ours):
Trump Administration
Out of the 312 mentions of the word "Trump," 158 refer to the Trump administration rather than Trump as an individual. Many of these passages call for the restoration or continuation of regulations implemented by the previous Trump administration. Selected examples are provided below (emphasis ours):
Some of the mentions of the Trump administration are purely informative, providing context about the state of affairs during the Trump administration, while others are positive, praising the actions and policies implemented during the administration:
Moreover, the term "Trump-era" appears five times in the document, and the phrase "Trump years" is mentioned once (emphasis ours):
'President Trump'
There were dozens of instances in the document that directly referred to Trump. "President Trump" was mentioned 41 times, and "President Donald Trump" appeared 14 times throughout the document. Selected examples are provided below:
Some common phrases in the document involving Trump's name include "Trump-appointed leadership," "Trump-Biden tariffs," "Trump's Schedule F," "Trump rules" and "Trump-Russia collusion":
Additionally, Trump was quoted once, in the context of trade policy:
Tonight, I am also asking you to pass the United States Reciprocal Trade Act, so that if another country places an unfair tariff on an American product, we can charge them the exact same tariff on the exact same product that they sell to us.
President Donald J. Trump, 2019 State of the Union Address
'Trump' in Footnotes
Out of the 312 mentions of Trump, 23 are in footnotes citing Trump's executive orders (see example below, emphasis added):
President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 13891, "Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents," October 9, 2019, in Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 199 (October 15, 2019), pp. 55235– 55238, https://home.treasury.gov/sites/default/files/2018-04/0411%20Signed%20Treasury%20OIRA%20MOA.pdf (accessed January 31, 2023).
Additionally, there are 20 other footnotes referencing various documents and sources that include the word "Trump," as illustrated in the examples below.
'Trump' Used as a Verb and Adjective
Among the 312 instances of "Trump" in the document, we discovered that the word was not used as a surname in two cases. Once the word "trump" was used as a verb:
"ERISA should not be allowed to trump states' ability to protect innocent human life in the womb.
In another case, it was used in an adjective ("trumped-up"):
In 2015, for example, Investor's Business Daily accused the CFPB of "diverting potentially millions of dollars in settlement payments for alleged victims of lending bias to a slush fund for poverty groups tied to the Democratic Party" and planning "to create a so-called Civil Penalty Fund from its own shakedown operations targeting financial institutions" that would use "ramped-up (and trumped-up) anti-discrimination lawsuits and investigations" to "bankroll some 60 liberal nonprofits, many of whom are radical Acorn-style pressure groups."
'Biden' Appears 375 Times in the Same Document
"To be fair, Biden's name appears 303 times according to search results of the same document," one X user commented under the post spreading the claim about Trump's name appearing 312 times in the Project 2025 document. Our analysis found that the word "Biden" actually appears 375 times in the document, with 226 mentions in the context of the Biden administration, 26 instances referring to "President Biden" and six to "President Joe Biden."
(Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise)
Below are some examples of mentions of "Biden" in the document, typically referring to reversing, reevaluating or criticizing Biden-era policies (emphasis ours):
You can read the full "Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise" document below:
https://media.snopes.com/2024/06/2025_mandate_for_leadership_compressed.pdf
For several months, we received a flood of reader inquiries asking whether Project 2025 was a real effort to "reshape America." Read our findings in our in-depth article.
We have also recently fact-checked some other Project 2025-related rumors:
'Trump's Project 2025' Calls for Eliminating National Weather Service?
Used Tampons Were Mailed to Project 2025's Offices After Gen Z TikTokers Started Protest Trend?
Video Shows Trump Shaking Hands with Head of Group Behind Project 2025
Sources:
Kasprak, Alex. "Video Shows Trump Shaking Hands with Head of Group Behind Project 2025?" Snopes, 9 July 2024, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/trump-project-2025-roberts/.
Liles, Jordan. "Used Tampons Were Mailed to Project 2025's Offices After Gen Z TikTokers Started Protest Trend?" Snopes, 9 July 2024, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/project-2025-tampons-tiktok/.
Wrona, Aleksandra. "'Trump's Project 2025' Calls for Eliminating National Weather Service?" Snopes, 9 July 2024, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/project-2025-noaa-national-weather-service/.
Wrona, Nur Ibrahim, Aleksandra. "What's Project 2025? Unpacking the Pro-Trump Plan to Overhaul US Government." Snopes, 3 July 2024, https://www.snopes.com//news/2024/07/03/project-2025-trump-us-government/.
