The former director of Project 2025, a right-wing plan for what Donald Trump could do in a second term as president, is sharply criticizing Trump’s campaign, accusing its two top advisers of a series of missteps, lack of preparation and overconfidence that he says have jeopardized Trump’s chances in November.

First Public Statement Since Departure

The critique is the first public statement from Paul Dans, a longtime supporter of Trump, since he announced his departure from Project 2025 in late July. Dans oversaw the project for more than two years until Democrats publicized its proposals and turned it into a political liability for Trump. The former president ultimately disavowed the venture.

In an interview, Dans, a lawyer who served several roles in the final two years of the Trump administration, blamed Trump’s senior advisers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, for the episode and for the close race. He urged Trump to replace the two consultants.

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“Trump should be running like Secretariat at the Belmont, but instead it’s a race to the wire,” Dans said.

His complaints reflect a discontent that has been simmering for weeks among a faction of Trump’s supporters on the right. Several media figures, activists and former Trump administration officials say they are worried by what they see as strategic mistakes this summer, followed by the campaign’s overtures to the center as it seeks to win over swing voters.

As is typical in Trump’s orbit, the complaints are rarely, if ever, aimed at Trump himself, but instead at his top aides. They recently grew so loud that the hashtag #FireLaCivita briefly trended on the social platform X.

A wave of summertime dissent was also a feature of the former president’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns. In those races, Trump responded by shaking up his campaign leadership. This year, Trump has given no indication that he intends to sideline his top advisers in the final weeks of the race.

“Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita have done a great job, I could not be more happy with them,” Trump said in a statement to The New York Times in response to Dans’ remarks.

Trump Brings in Additional Advisers

Trump, however, has brought in additional advisers. Last month, he added Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager Trump fired in 2016, to the team. He has also recently sought guidance from Ben Carson, Trump’s former housing secretary, as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his independent presidential bid last month; former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; and billionaire Elon Musk.

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LaCivita and Wiles, both longtime Republican insiders, have forged close ties to important figures on the right, including Russell T. Vought, who directed the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump administration, and Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA.

In an interview, Kirk pushed back on Dans’ critique: “Chris and Susie are very competent, sophisticated and loyal to the president. I think they have their head on right. We’re in a good spot and they deserve a lot of credit for that.”

Raheem Kassam, editor-in-chief of The National Pulse, a right-wing news site, and a frequent guest host on “War Room,” the popular podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, is among those who have been agitating for a leadership change for months.

In an interview, Kassam called himself the “ombudsman” and “chief public whip” for the loosely knit group of people — most of whom declined to speak publicly for fear of retribution — who remain concerned about the state of the campaign. He cast LaCivita and Wiles as most concerned with their opportunity for personal gain from the campaign. “I really don’t think Chris and Susie care if they win. I’ve never gotten that vibe,” he said.

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Both Dans and Kassam said they viewed LaCivita as insufficiently committed to Trump’s movement and to his false claims about a stolen election in 2020. They complained that the advisers were unprepared for President Joe Biden to drop out of the race, and that Trump’s stances on policy matters including abortion and trade have alienated significant portions of the party base, depressing enthusiasm.

But no topic has been more contentious for the dissenting loyalists than the handling of Project 2025.

20,000 Party Loyalists Vetted to Fill Positions

The heart of the Heritage Foundation-funded project, Dans said, was a database of roughly 20,000 party loyalists who were vetted and ready to fill positions in a Republican administration. “The focus was on draining the swamp,” he said.

But most public attention has been drawn to the effort’s 900-plus-page policy book, called the “Mandate for Leadership.”

Although Democrats first seized on the document a year ago, it didn’t gain traction as an attack line until early July, when the Heritage Foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, said in a podcast interview that the country was “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

The remark went viral, and three days later Trump used Truth Social to disown Project 2025, claiming that he had “no idea who is behind it” and that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”

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Dans said he was blindsided by the post, which he called an inadvertent signal to Democrats to push even harder to tie Trump to Project 2025.

“They took the bait,” Dans said of the campaign leadership. He pointed to comments by LaCivita at the Republican National Convention, where he called Project 2025 a “pain in the ass” and said that the people behind it “do not speak for the campaign.”

The strategy agitated loyalists who interpreted it to mean the campaign was cutting everyone involved in Project 2025 out of a possible transition. Those fears were underscored when the campaign installed Linda McMahon, chair of the America First Policy Institute, on its transition team. That group, a conservative think tank, has been working on a transition blueprint completely separate from the one made by Project 2025.

Tim Chapman, the president of the conservative policy group Advancing American Freedom, called the handling of Project 2025 a “rude awakening about the reality of politics.”

He said he was even more concerned about some of its recent policy positions, including what he sees as a more moderate stance on abortion and proposals for 20% tariffs on imported goods. Both ideas, he said, reflected a shift to the center in a bid for independent voters, but risked alienating the party’s base.

“The campaign is made up of political animals who don’t care about the ideological wing of the conservative movement,” Chapman said.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Ken Bensinger/Leigh Vogel
c. 2024 The New York Times Company