But Heritage says otherwise.

Do they? Could you provide a link where they actually say that, specifically?

What Heritage actually did was just copy of all of the things that Trump has said he wants to do, mixed in some stuff that they wanted, and took that repackaged product and hawked it in an effort to seem relevant and important again.

It didn't work. "Project 2025" was published a year and a half ago, and was almost entirely ignored by everyone. No one of any importance in its target audience - Republicans and conservatives - was taking it at all seriously. No one who mattered was taking up the offer to let Heritage, rather than people who actually had power in the party, set the agenda.

Mostly that's because, who the F is Heritage any more? They were an important part of the academic conservative think tank apparatus providing legitimacy to the old guard conservative movement. They were useful and important during the Buckley-era effort to expunge the whackjob Bircherists and make the conservative movement "respectable" in the Chambers of Commerce and country clubs. Trump destroyed that. His target isn't the elite, but the "hobbits" that Steve Bannon derided. And the party has shifted to right-wing populism, consigning Heritage's positions to the dustbin of history. So Project 2025 was an effort by Heritage to bend the knee to Trump, to show they could ape and mimic a lot of what he wanted to do anyway.

But they couldn't even do that right. They tried to preserve some of that old-guard conservative stuff that Trump disdains (Trump doesn't want to drown government in a bathtub, rather than in a pool of debt spending to make himself popular). And they packaged this as if they were writing the future of the party, which anyone with any awareness of where the GOP is these days knows is farcical. No one's writing the future of the party but Trump.

BTW - you know the real tell that Trump wasn't involved? That these people were off on their own? He isn't getting a cut. They're selling these books, and Trump isn't getting a piece of that money? They're moving product, and Trump's picture isn't on it? Does anyone actually believe that a thing that Trump was involved in would be structured like that? That's the clearest indication that these are people off on their own trying to capitalize on Trump, rather than the other way 'round.