The video in question was shot in May 2021. Project 2025 was not publicly announced until April 2022, and not published until April 2023. While Vance has expressed support for ideas similar to those found in the Project 2025 document titled "Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise," he has not explicitly endorsed that document.
On Sept. 16, 2024, claims spread on social media that a video showed U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio — former President Donald Trump's vice-presidential running mate in the November 2024 election — endorsing Project 2025, a conservative coalition's plan for a future Republican administration.
"JD Vance endorses Project 2025," @KamalaHQ, an X account promoting Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign, captioned it, reaching more than 4 million views as of this writing.
"BREAKING: In a stunning new leak, JD Vance completely endorses Project 2025. Donald Trump can't run from this now. Retweet so all Americans see this," read a similar post from the @harris_wins X account, which describes itself as "the largest online community supporting soon to be President Kamala Harris."
While the video in question was authentic — i.e., genuine and unmanipulated — the claims accompanying it were not. The clip was recorded in 2021 and does not show Vance endorsing or even mentioning Project 2025, which did not exist at the time. Therefore, we have rated this video as being miscaptioned.
Snopes reached out to Harris' campaign for a comment and will update this report if we receive a response.
The video clip came from an interview Vance gave to The Federalist, uploaded to YouTube on May 18, 2021 (the relevant portion begins around the 25:48 mark):
Here's a transcription of the relevant part of the interview:
Vance: I think the thing we have to take away from the last 10 years is that we really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power. I was talking about this with someone earlier today, where, you remember there was some threat that Congressional or Senate Republicans made: "If you get rid of the filibuster, we're going to do X, Y and Z." But when you actually look at it, it's like, well, this is— this is not that interesting.
[…]
Vance: This is the threat? If you get rid of the filibuster, we're gonna do this stuff? Like, they're talking about expanding the Supreme Court, they're talking about adding, you know, two senators from heavily Democratic places.
[…]
Vance: So I think — I mean, look, I am a cynic about this and maybe even a little bit of a pessimist — but I think the challenge confronting American conservatives is that we have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they've ever been. We've lost big business, we've lost finance, we've lost the culture, we've lost the academy. And if we're going to actually really effect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class.
I say that knowing — and hearing myself — it sounds really hard. It is really hard. But I don't think there's like a détente with these people. I don't think there's sort of a compromise that we're going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we're going to keep losing. And that's the challenge.
Not only did Vance fail to mention Project 2025 in the interview, but it would have been impossible for him to do so, as the initiative wasn't announced until April 2022. Moreover, the Project 2025 document titled "Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise," which details the project's agenda for a conservative government, was not published until April 2023. The video reflects Vance's broader commentary on political power dynamics, not a public endorsement of a specific written agenda.
According to the political fact-checking website PolitiFact, the Harris campaign "said the video showed Vance voicing support for policies similar to those promoted in Project 2025" when asked for evidence to support its claim that Vance endorsed Project 2025. It also cited Vance's affiliations with of Project 2025's contributors.
For further reading, we recommend our detailed article titled "What's Project 2025? Unpacking the Pro-Trump Plan to Overhaul US Government."