MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin – President of the Heritage Foundation Dr. Kevin Roberts clarified the relationship between former President Donald Trump and the non-profit’s transition project in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller.
Trump first distanced himself from Heritage’s Project 2025, a policy outline and a personnel list built to help serve the next Republican president, through a Truth Social post, claiming he knew nothing about it or who runs it. The sudden split sparked speculation within the media, and came after weeks of Democratic attacks on Trump and Project 2025.
Roberts addressed the former president’s comments in a Tuesday interview with the Daily Caller, saying that the project is meant to be a “restaurant menu” for the next administration to choose policies and personnel from.
“I have a strong personal relationship with President Trump, I presume that will continue. Project 2025 is a reflection of basically the entire conservative movement,” Roberts said. “It’s never intended to speak for any presidential campaign. We want President Trump to continue running a great campaign, it’s actually very important both for the purposes of his campaign and for those of us that lead nonprofits, to have the reminder about that distance.”
“Great ideas and great people always rise to the top. President Trump is one of the best CEO’s we’ve ever had in modern history, both as president and in the business world,” he continued. “So for us at Heritage, at Project 2025, we’re doing the same thing we’ve done for over 50 years, which is put some personnel together, put some policy together.”
“We know who makes the decisions. President Trump is the boss. We not only don’t mind that, we celebrate that.”
Trump’s disavowal was harsh, stating that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” It came after Roberts said in an interview with Steve Bannon’s War Room that the country was in a second American Revolution, which would “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
The Biden campaign seized on the video, saying that Roberts was calling for violence. The clip, the Biden campaign told the Hill, shows that the former president and his allies are “dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.”
Some speculated that the former president separated himself from the Project 2025 in light of the comments. Roberts said the outcry over Project 2025 as a whole has been “driven by the left’s mischaracterization.”
Rather than advocating for violence, Roberts told the Caller that he was describing the right’s peacefulness in contrast to violence he sees coming from its left-wing counterparts.
“What I meant was that the right, the political right, especially those of us working on policy objectives, are always going to be peaceful. That the whole point of, say, Project 2025 and Heritage’s work, is that we’re only focused on the ballot box and on policy implementation, and that was going to be peaceful,” Roberts said. “But that the people who really are instigating violence, we can think about recent history, heck, we can think about the last 50 years, would be the radical left. And so they turned out, I think they were looking for an opportunity to turn that and all of that is unfortunate,” Roberts told the Caller.
Roberts’ went on to explain that he had referenced the second American Revolution because it was a line former President Ronald Reagan used in the 1980s,and he quipped that Americans just need a better civic education.
“But I think it’s really important, just to sum up at this point, that we do not give the left the opportunity to do what they always want to do, which is to co-opt our language. So the point of mentioning, of referring to the Second American Revolution, is to lean on the speech that Ronald Reagan gave in 1985 when he said basically the same thing, which is that this is about institutional change,” Roberts continued. “It’s about change in our communities. And it’s not only bloodless for those of us on the center right, but that we wouldn’t even contemplate something that’s the opposite,” he said.
“It’s the left that does that and the left projects all the time. So we’re being really clear that what we’re talking about is an American restoration,” he said. (RELATED: Conservative Groups Are Building An Army Of Personnel To Take Over The Government)
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 previously told the Caller that they have been clear since the beginning that it wasn’t meant to speak for any candidate or their campaign. Despite the denials, the Biden campaign has created a site devoted to connecting Trump to the initiative.
Project 2025 will destroy America.
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Look it up. We made it easy for you: https://t.co/GFccEpzfUs pic.twitter.com/jNW94z0e0Y— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 10, 2024
Roberts told the Caller that he has a deep personal relationship with Trump but that he actually hasn’t spoken to the former president since the comments on Project 2025.
“I assume [we will talk soon] just because of the natural course of things, not necessarily because of the specific comment, but because one of the roles that I have leading the Heritage Foundation is to talk to political leaders.”
As Trump’s lead grows, the former president’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have started vetting people for his father’s administration, according to Axios. Roberts didn’t say whether he had been in touch with the former president’s sons, but told the Caller that conversations like that could be expected to come in the next few weeks.
Above all, Roberts stressed that Project 2025’s goal is to be a helpful tool in the background for a potential new administration.
“We’re designed to be behind the scenes and to basically geek out on policies and put together this huge menu of options, which is what this is,” Roberts told the Caller.
“I don’t think there’s one conservative in the country who would agree with all of those things. That’s sort of the nature of a restaurant menu, which is what this is, but I do think that the great people who are part of this, we’ve had close to 2000 people, in addition to the 12,000 that are already in the personnel database we put together, come into the project as a result of all of the media attention.”
