Mandy Gunasekara, former EPA chief of staff during the Trump administration and co-author of the Project 2025 document, told Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) at an Oversight Committee hearing on Thursday that she did not collaborate with former President Donald Trump or his campaign on the policy manual. Throughout the remainder of her testimony, she then criticized the Biden-Harris administration’s environmental policies repeatedly.
“Ranking member Raskin, you reiterated and have created a boogeyman that just isn’t there. I did author the EPA chapter on Project 2025, but in the course of that, I did not work with President Trump, with any of the people who work for him directly, or his campaign,” she said. “It is very misleading to suggest that there is any coordination there because I can personally tell you it did not happen.
“And I am not vying for a position in the next administration, I’ve actually left DC and moved to a small town in Mississippi where I interact every day with people who live outside this bubble of gaslighting, people who deal with the consequences of policy decisions made by this administration,” she added.
“The Heritage Foundation has been involved with pushing forward conservative policies for quite a while…and is more committed to representing the position of the broader conservative movement than any one candidate or person,” she said. “I understand why you created this boogeyman — because your leading candidate is running away from policy actions she has taken that make Americans’ lives much more difficult.”
WATCH:
“MISLEADING”: Former EPA Chief of Staff Says Trump Had Nothing to Do with Project 2025 pic.twitter.com/Y7LqnAmnJf
— DC Shorts (@theDCshorts) September 20, 2024
Trump also ripped the ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis for insinuating that he was involved in the policy manual. “I think he (Muir) corrected me 11 times. Of the 11 times, I don’t think he had the right to correct me at all. Didn’t correct her once. Like on Project 2025, I have no idea about — had nothing to do with me, he didn’t correct her, he knew that. Charlottesville — nothing was done wrong. All you had to do is read my statement one more sentence and you would’ve seen that. Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Jesse (Watters), all of them, they — Greg Gutfeld — they all took that and they corrected it many times. But they keep coming with the same lies,” he told Fox News.
The social media account “Kamala HQ” on X (formerly Twitter), managed by Kamala Harris’s campaign, has been criticized for its “repeatedly deceptive” practices. The account, @KamalaHQ, has been accused of misleadingly editing and captioning videos to target GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. Examples include taking Trump’s quotes on immigration out of context and misrepresenting his “very fine people on both sides” comment related to the Charlottesville rally, per CNN’s fact-checker, Daniel Dale.
The @KamalaHQ account, which often targets both Donald Trump and his prominent supporters, has been described by CNN as an “irreverent attack dog.” CNN’s fact-checking report highlights “eight examples of false or misleading video posts from the account since mid-August, including three from just this week.” Some of these inaccuracies and misrepresentations have been scrutinized and contested by the account @KamalaHQLies.
On August 17, the account misleadingly edited a video of former President Trump speaking at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to falsely suggest that he was confused about his location. “Trump: Would that be okay, North Carolina? (He is in Pennsylvania).” It included a six-second video clip in which Trump said, while pointing to his left, “Would that be okay, North Carolina? I don’t think so, right,” the post said with this caption: “Donald Trump is lost and confused.” However, the full video clip showed that Trump was pointing to supporters who had come to the Pennsylvania rally from North Carolina.
