Subject: Re: Trump and Project 2025
One of the architects of P2025 was a Trump staffer before. It would be easy to tie him into it via "guilt by association". I know it's a logical fallacy, but most voters couldn't tell the difference (unfortunately).

Not just one - many of them were. Not surprisingly, when Trump was turfed out of office, a fair number of his former staffers landed at GOP think tanks. Which is what usually happens when the WH changes parties.

The problem with "guilt by association" like this is - again - Trump is an egomaniacal narcissist. He doesn't form teams, he doesn't form associations, he doesn't have loyalty to his underlings or build teams to accomplish things. There's no one he trusts or relies on or is a close confidante. Everything is transactional, and he'll throw even his closest former staffers under the bus in a second on a whim.

So if a Trump staffer participated in Project 2025, voters will intuit - correctly - that this means absolutely nothing to Trump. Trump will not think, "Oh, this person that I esteem has put work into this product, so I should give it more consideration than if a stranger had done, out of deference to the service this staffer has shown me." And voters are not likely to think he will.