WASHINGTON — MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes lambasted Project 2025’s proposed pornography ban during a recent installment of his show “All In,” alongside other controversial proposals on the conservative initiative’s “unhinged wish list.”
The liberal-leaning pundit listed some of the most extreme items on the agenda of Project 2025, which is spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation.
Although many of Project 2025’s leaders are former Trump staffers, and some have stated that they are preparing to staff a potential Donald Trump White House in January 2025, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee attempted to distance himself from the initiative only last week, almost a year after its aims were first reported.
As XBIZ reported, Trump recently posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Last month, Free Speech Coalition (FSC) warned the adult industry and sex workers about Project 2025, calling it “an aggressive and dangerous right-wing policy proposal that could have severe implications for our industry and community.”
Hayes’ inclusion of the proposed porn ban is noteworthy because many of the liberal and Democratic politicians and commentators criticizing Project 2025 have notably omitted it from their own lists of objectionable proposals.
After listing Project 2025’s proposed crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights and visibility, access to sexual health, supposedly “woke” activism and abortion rights, Hayes added, “And, get this, I don’t know if people know this, but people should: ‘Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.’”
Hayes then stared at the camera and blinked in disbelief, adding “America, 2024.”
Hayes described Project 2025 as “the wish list of a bunch of fringe, far-right policy proposals that I think many voters would be really horrified to learn about.”
Sex workers, members of the adult industry and XBIZ have been warning about Project 2025’s sweeping censorship proposals since August of last year, when Dame magazine’s Brynn Tannehill first reported on Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” blueprint.
The Washington Post published an article in November stating that much of the planning for a second Trump term “has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed ‘Project 2025,’ the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act,” according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by the paper.