Trump shared private flight with Project 2025 head despite denying connection

Donald Trump shared a private flight with the head of the rightwing thinktank behind Project 2025 , the Washington Post reported , publishing evidence including a picture of the two men in airplane seats, grinning.

The flight was on its way to a conference organized by the thinktank, at which Trump told group members they would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do”.

Orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a 900-page plan initially presented for a second Trump administration that posits aggressive rightwing reform to every corner of the federal government.

Democratic attacks have particularly focused on its threats to reproductive rights , LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights and other progressive concerns.

Related: Project 2025: rightwing manifesto’s key proposals and how they could affect you

Appearing to fear that Kamala Harris was making Project 2025 an effective campaign issue, Trump and allies have since tried to disavow the effort, with Trump claiming last month he had “no idea who is in charge of” Project 2025.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for Trump told the Post that Project 2025 “has never and will never be an accurate reflection of President Trump’s policies”.

But the Post published plane-tracking data and the picture of Trump with Kevin Roberts , president of the Heritage Foundation, in April 2022.

The two men were flying from Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, to Amelia Island in the same state for the annual Heritage conference.

At the conference, the Post said, Trump told attendees: “With Kevin and the staff, and I met so many of them now, I took pictures with among the most handsome, beautiful people I’ve ever seen.”

The Post also pointed out that in April of this year Roberts told the paper: “I personally have talked to President Trump about Project 2025 because my role in the project has been to make sure that all of the candidates who have responded to our offer for a briefing on Project 2025 get one from me.”

Democratic attacks on Project 2025 have inflicted appreciable damage. Last month, Project 2025 director Paul Dans stepped down amid “pressure from Trump campaign leadership”, the Daily Beast first reported.

Roberts has attracted attention, too. In July, he told the Trump ally Steve Bannon : “We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Controversy over such comments drew attention to Roberts’ forthcoming book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America , which has an introduction by the Ohio senator JD Vance , Trump’s vice-presidential pick. Publication has now been delayed until after election day .

In his introduction, obtained by the New Republic, Vance calls the Heritage Foundation “the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump”. The group has indeed produced policy plans for Republican administrations since 1980. But none have proved remotely as controversial as Project 2025.

Related: What is Project 2025 and what is Trump’s involvement?

Earlier this week, two House Democrats told Roberts to publish plans for the first 180 days of a second Trump administration, which remain under wraps.

“It is time to stop hiding the ball on what we are concerned could very well be the most radical, extreme, and dangerous parts of Project 2025,” Jared Huffman of California and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts said in an open letter .

On Thursday, the Post quoted an anonymous Project 2025 source as saying that some contributors saw controversy over their work, and Trump’s attempts to disavow it, as “a disaster, a catastrophe … the wishful-thinking school is that this will all blow over”.