In April 2022, at a dinner with the Heritage foundation, he said that the Heritage foundation was going to "lay the groundwork for what our movement will do."

https://x.com/VaughnHillyard/status/1811402883604050216

"Our country is going to hell. The critical job of institutions such as Heritage is to lay the groundwork, and Heritage does such an incredible job at that. [...] But this is a great group. They're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do, when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America, and that's coming."

Here's the whole transcript: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-delivers-k...

At the same time, Trump has been saying "I know nothing about Project 2025" and "I have no idea who is behind it."

Edit:

Also, CNN says 140 people from the Trump administration worked on Project 2025: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project...

I think Trump, not really being into policy at all, just populism, really does have no idea what it’s project 2025, but he is still going to pick many of the writers and supporters of it to run his government, he doesn’t really have better choices.

Trump is the kind of guy who will say he is against abortion while asking and paying for his mistress to get one. He has a great sense on how to work populism, but doesn’t really have ideals/policies of his own.

Yeah, I agree with you. He's not super focused on policy, and he likely skimmed Project 2025, or never read it himself. But like you said, he'll still pick many people who worked on it or who will follow it while serving as part of his administration, and that's what's worrying. I have no reason to assume his administration won't try to implement it.

The guy has no intellectual curiosity, he thrives on the attention of being president but doesn’t bother with briefings, instead calling into FoxNews to complain about one vanity thing or another. That’s the problem really: the people who will work for him in a second term by now have learned how to manage him by stroking his ego, there will be much less chaos than term 1, and a lot more damage.