AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Former President Donald Trump will likely only surround himself with people who are completely loyal to him during his second term, according to a Wednesday report from Puck News’ national correspondent Tina Nguyen.
Nguyen, a prominent “MAGA whisperer,” spoke to a nearby source Trump who said he would ignore it Project 2025 as he promised during the campaign in favor of a different agenda for his second term. In a long thread on social mediashe reported:
Everyone thinks Project 2025 is the playbook for Trump’s next act. Reasonable, considering that the August Heritage Foundation got all the other conservative think tanks on board. Except one: the America First Policy Institute.
AFPI was founded just four years ago by several former Trump officials and cabinet members. Their goal: to create the MAGA version of the Heritage Foundation to preserve Trump’s legacy. And within months of turning down the project, they launched their OWN transition project: handbooks, job portals, training, etc. If you asked anyone at the time, the difference between the two boiled down to this: Project 2025 was designed for *every* GOP chairman. The AFPI Transition Project is designed for one person: Trump. I wrote last year about the looming Cold War between these two.
Nguyen suggested that while Project 2025 attracted its share of media and Democratic attention, AFPI’s role could ultimately be far more influential in shaping Trump’s second administration.
Her report also noted that the AFPI Transition Project was specifically tailored to Trump’s vision and needs, unlike Project 2025, which was designed as a broad, “out of the box” guide for any Republican president.
“If you asked anyone at the time, the difference between the two boiled down to this: Project 2025 was designed for every GOP president. The AFPI Transition Project is designed for one purpose: Trump,” she wrote.
Nguyen added:
What will the next Trump administrator look like, and who will be in it? As that source told me, Trump was burned last time by rogue staffers and career officials. This time “(he) wants people whose only mantra is: whatever the president wants, we’re going to do.
She concluded that Trump may be hesitant to trust the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap because of its donor-driven structure. In contrast, AFPI is seen as a group “100 percent beholden” to the former president, making its agenda more attractive to him.
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