Revisiting Project 2025: Narratives on Alt-Tech Platforms
Since chatter has increased significantly on Gettr since our April 2024 report, Open Measures researchers are revisiting Project 2025.
TLDR
- In April 2024, Open Measures researchers investigated public sentiments about Project 2025 on the alt-tech platform Gettr.
- Since then, Project 2025 has been increasingly in the media spotlight, with Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and others talking about it publicly. To see how online sentiments had changed, Open Measures researchers conducted follow-up research specifically on Gettr.
- Chatter about Project 2025 has increased significantly on Gettr since the start of July 2024.
- Many Gettr users expressed positive views about Project 2025. However, users comments’ from July and August 2024 showed confused about the link between the Trump campaign and Project 2025. Some users expressed mixed views as to why he would publicly distance himself from it.
Background
Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals outlining ambitions for a second Trump presidency, has become a source of anxiety on both the political left and the right in the US. Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, have pointed to Project 2025 as a source of concern, while Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made efforts to publicly distance himself from it.
Project 2025 is a 900-page policy document from the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. It includes proposals related to climate change, healthcare, LGBT+ issues and more. Notably, Project 2025 seeks to recruit conservative potential staffers for future government jobs. Over 100 conservative organizations have signed on to the initiative.
Central to Project 2025’s stated vision is to recruit and train the next wave of conservative political appointees via its Presidential Political Academy. Recently, hours of video footage were uncovered that coached prospective appointees on subjects ranging from navigating public records laws to how to “diagnose the problems of the administrative state”.1
Trump Campaign Links to Project 2025
Trump has made statements, at times contradictory, disavowing Project 2025. On July 5, 2024, he posted the following disavowal Truth Social:
Despite these declarations, there are various and close links between the Project 2025 team and the team around Trump and his potential future administration. For example, JD Vance, Trump’s pick for Vice President, wrote the foreword to a book by Kevin Roberts, President of the aforementioned Heritage Foundation. As another example, a slate of Project 2025 authors were invited to be involved with the 2024 Republican National Convention, including RNC speaker Peter Navarro and RNC committee member Russ Vought.2 3 4
Open Measures investigated reactions to Project 2025 on the alt-tech platforms Gettr and Scored in April 2024. At the time, researchers found that users on Gettr were enthusiastic about the project. In light of increased media attention on Project 2025, Open Measures researchers decided to revisit chatter on Gettr to see if online sentiments were changing.
Gettr is an American microblogging website launched in July 2021. Co-founded by Jason Miller, a former spokesperson for the Trump administration, the site has attracted users with alt-right political views and is rife with extremism, racism and antisemitism.
Analysis
Gettr
In April 2024, researchers at Open Measures noted that Project 2025 had sustained a fair amount of attention on Gettr, with 400 mentions of the report on the platform since its publication. A renewed look at mentions of Project 2025 within Open Measures’ Gettr dataset found that interest has greatly increased since the start of July 2024.
Using Open Measures’ changepoint feature, which identifies a point in time when a statistically significant change in data collection occurs, there was an increase in discussion of Project 2025 starting around July 5, 2024. It is important to note that this is the same day Trump posted on Truth Social to distance himself from Project 2025.
Confusion about Trump and Project 2025
Posts on Gettr indicated that many users were struggling to understand the links between Project 2025 and Trump, with some voicing support for both Project 2025 and Trump and others supporting one or the other. Trump supporters seemed unsure whether to support Project 2025, with some expressing enthusiasm and others painting it as propaganda from the political left. Some recent comments include:
On July 30, 2024, a user expressed concern over Trump distancing himself from Project 2025 [sic]:
I think this is a huge mistake! I think President Trump is making a huge fucking stupid ass mistake! I guess he doesn’t really want to deconstruct the administrative State after all does he? I love the Heritage foundation. I donate regularly to the Heritage foundation and they came up with an awesome plan. The fact that President Trump and his campaign are distancing themselves from it is a problem. I never thought that President Trump would be able to piss me off but this does it! He makes too many fucking mistakes!…
A comment on August 1, 2024, suggested that Project 2025 was a lie being pushed by the Democrats [sic]:
For years, Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats lied about President Biden’s health. It resulted in a coup against a sitting U.S. president. Now, Ms. Harris and the Democrat Party are pushing a new lie: Project 2025.
Similarly, a user on August 8, 2024, suggested that Trump was totally unconnected to Project 2025, highlighting the campaign’s published agenda dubbed Project 47:
The demoncraps are still passing their [pathetic] lie about their latest campaign scam, called “Project 2025”, which President Trump has nothing to do with, since he has the MAGA Project 47 of his own!
Concerns about Project 2025 Policies
Among those who supported Project 2025, the main source of interest seemed to be the initiative’s stated goal of firing many federal government workers and replacing them with conservative loyalists.
On July 31, 2024, a user expressed support for Project 2025 with the following [sic]:
Project 2025 would make that possible. we could close 3/4 of the federal government offices and still run four times as efficient as we are now in government.
A comment on July 31, 2024, challenged whether the Trump campaign could deliver on promises made by Project 2025 [sic]:
That’s fine if Trump campaign wants to throw Project 2025 under the bus. I have one question though. Does the Campaign have 3,000 people vetted and ready to hit the ground running on 1/20/2025?
From July 14, 2024, a user highlights their support for Project 2025’s take on staffing of the government [sic]:
Anyone who disapproves of Project 2025 either doesn’t understand what it’s all about or actually likes being governed by the unelected bureaucrats of the Deep State.
Overall, comments on Gettr highlighted the lack of clarity that many voters have about what level of involvement the Trump campaign has with Project 2025.
Conclusion
Increased media attention since July 2024 has driven more conversations about Project 2025 on alt-tech platforms like Gettr. Many users seem unsure how to regard the project and what Trump’s level of involvement is. Some express support for Project 2025 and find Trump’s disavowals concerning. Others believe Project 2025 and the Trump campaign are completely unrelated and should remain that way. Some have also questioned the provenance of Project 2025, suggesting that it originated from other political sources. This is a notable deviation from what researchers observed in April 2024, when Gettr users expressed views on Project 2025 that were almost unanimously positive.
Open Measures researchers will continue to monitor chatter on alt-tech platforms in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election in the US.
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- Kroll, A., & Surgey, N. (2024, August 10). 14 hours of videos from project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/video-project-2025-presidential-training-academy-trump-election. ↩︎
- Ward, I. (2024, August 2). It Was Supposed to Be Trump’s Administration in Waiting. But Project 2025 Was a Mirage All Along. Politico. ↩︎
- Contorno, S. (2024, July 11). Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found at least 140 people who worked for him are involved | CNN politics. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project-2025/index.html. ↩︎
- Policy | Project 2025. Project 2025. (n.d.). https://www.project2025.org/policy/. ↩︎