More Americans search for Project 2025 than Taylor Swift or the NFL: Google results

Four months before Election Day, Google search results show that one major political issue is currently capturing Americans’ interest even more than professional sports and pop culture: Project 2025.

On Wednesday, MSNBC host Ari Melber showed a graphic showing Google search results from the week following the first televised presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Google showed that searches for the far-right authoritarian “Project 2025,” which describes the Republicans’ political agenda for a second Trump term, exceeded searches for pop star Taylor Swift and the National Football League (NFL).

“More people are concerned with this controversial project than with the woman you see on your screen, who has proven to fascinate so many people around the world,” Melber said as he flashed images of Swift and her sold-out Eras Tour on the screen. “Shoutout to Taylor. I don’t want to drag her too much into politics.”

READ MORE: “One of the oldest tricks of a dictator”: This is why Trump is lying about Project 2025

“I’m not just talking about news viewers or political junkies or even just Trump opponents,” he continued. “You can’t get past those Taylor (Swift) and NFL levels without a lot of people searching for Project 2025… But with Trump turning away from that, a hell of a lot more people are now reading about something that Donald Trump himself wants to turn away from.”

“People are investigating this,” he added.

As Melber noted, the former president has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 over the past week, but with little success. On July 5, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he found some of the proposals “absolutely ridiculous and miserable,” but did not say which ones. He also insisted that he had “no idea” who was behind them, but that he “wished them luck.”

The same day Trump made his post, Google Trends showed that “Project 2025” was the fifth most popular search in the United States (“Supreme Court” was first). And CNN reporter Alayna Treene tweeted, “Many of the people involved in Project 2025 are close to Trump’s world and served in his previous (administration).”

READ MORE: Trump hopes that the “close partnership” with Project 2025 will not be noticed: former labor secretary

Former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich also sharply criticized Trump in a column for the Guardian for his opposition to Project 2025, pointing to the numerous former Trump White House staffers who are now closely associated with Project 2025. Russ Vought – his former director of the Office of Management and Budget – is head of the Center for Renewing America, one of the key partner organizations supporting Project 2025. John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, is also a senior adviser to Project 2025.

One of the main goals of Project 2025 is to pre-screen tens of thousands of potential nominees for a second Trump administration and then strategically place them in federal agencies after Trump signs an executive order called Schedule F. As comedian John Oliver detailed on his HBO show Last Week Tonight, Schedule F would eliminate numerous employment protections for federal employees, which could dramatically increase the number of presidential appointees from around 5,000 to over 54,000.

After installing pre-screened nominees (screened primarily for their loyalty to Trump and the MAGA agenda) in all federal agencies, Trump—or any Republican president—could implement policies with little interference from Congress and the courts. Some of the more controversial policies include abolishing no-fault divorce, a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions for rape and incest, banning books about slavery in schools, and cutting funding for the FBI and Justice Department, among others.

Watch Melber’s segment below or by clicking this link.

READ MORE: Trump: “I know nothing” about Project 2025, although numerous former officials were involved