Vance praises a key leader behind Project 2025, a conservative effort Trump has disavowed
Senator from Ohio JD VanceDonald Trump’s running mate praised the views of Heritage Foundation Chairman Kevin Roberts in the foreword to an upcoming book that could run counter to Trump campaign goals. attempt to distance myself from Heritage’s Project 2025 transition effort.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the foreword to Roberts’ forthcoming book, “Dawn’s Early Light,” on Tuesday, the same day that a shakeup took place at Project 2025, which has become a major election-year issue as Democrats and others argue that the nearly 1000 page vision it laid out is extreme.
“Never before has a figure of Roberts’ depth and stature on the American right attempted to articulate a truly new future for conservatism,” Vance writes in his foreword. “The Heritage Foundation is no random outpost on Capitol Hill; it has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”
Vance’s words, which echo Roberts’ frequent calls to completely dismantle American institutions and start over, highlight the overlap between Trump’s closest allies and the people driving Project 2025.
Trump’s top advisers have repeatedly criticized Project 2025 organizers for what they call a false impression that the transition effort is tied to the campaign. After Tuesday’s shakeup at Heritage, Roberts now directly leads Project 2025 operations.
The book, which will be published on September 24, outlines a vision for what the publisher “ a peaceful ‘Second American Revolution’The subtitle is “Taking Back Washington to Save America,” although previous descriptions of the book it was listed as “Setting Washington on Fire to Save America.”
The publisher’s description says it identifies institutions that conservatives must rebuild or take back, adding that some are “too corrupt to save.” Among the institutions it names are Ivy League universities, the FBI, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Department of Education and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
AP sought comment from spokespeople for Vance and the Trump campaign.
Also on Tuesday was Paul Dans, who directed Project 2025, left the Heritage Foundation amid continued criticism of the plan. Roberts said his departure came after the project completed what it set out to do.
In his foreword, Vance calls for more than just the elimination of the bad policies of the past, but for “reconstruction.”
“We need an aggressive conservatism, not just a conservatism that tries to prevent the left from doing things we don’t like,” Vance writes.
As Vance concludes his story, he quotes Roberts as saying that when dusk falls and someone hears wolves, “you should line up the wagons and load the muskets.”
“We all realize now that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets,” Vance added. “In the battles ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”
DNC spokesman Alex Floyd said in a statement that Vance’s language “reflects the same dangerous rhetoric we’ve heard from him and Donald Trump for years.”
Vance also writes about things he and Roberts have in common, including difficult upbringings, influential grandparents, and the Catholic faith. He also writes about parenting, which has recently been a point of contention for him after an interview surfaced again in which he said that the Democrats who run the country “are childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country unhappy too.”
In the book, he praises the idea that we should “encourage our children to marry and have children,” and teach them that marriage is a sacred bond, ideas he says come from “the old American right that recognized — correctly, in my view — that cultural norms and attitudes matter.”
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Smith reported from Providence, Rhode Island, and Swenson reported from New York. Associated Press writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.