The Heritage President Kevin Roberts made a lame attempt to distance himself from Trump and Vance during a friendly whitewashing segment on Fox "news" of his Project 2025. As we've discussed here, Trump and Vance have been trying to distance themselves from Roberts and Project 2025 ever since Democrats started shining a light on what's in it.
As we also discussed here, JD Vance wrote the forward for Robert's frightening book, Dawn's Early Light, which Baier asked him about in the segment above, but this question was after literally six minutes or so of allowing Roberts to deny and lie about what's in the document.
Roberts response was laughable given the fact that Project 2025 was written by a bunch of MAGA loyalists, who everyone knows will wind up back in positions of power if God forbid Trump finds his way back to the Oval Office. It's also humorous given the fact that their training videos had people discussing how to hide paper trails.
BAIER: This is Steve Corbin. He writes “Trumps claim he knows nothing about Project 2025 is questionable to say the least. The Heritage Foundation's website notes Trump 'fully embraced' 64 percent of its 321 policy reform recommendations during his 2017-2021 presidency. Since Trump implemented 64 percent of Heritage Foundation's manifesto and knowing he's not a policy wonk, odds are great -- if elected -- he will embrace the latest version Project 2025 lock, stock, and barrel.”
ROBERTS: We are not presumptuous about any elected official whether it's through Project 2025, or the daily and hourly work that we do it Heritage, will take our recommendations. We operate in service to them and in service to the American people.
We do believe however that if you want to restore the American dream that those policies should be enacted.
BAIER: Senator JD Vance apparently wrote a forward to your upcoming book. Is that true?
ROBERTS: That's true, and it's a great forward too.
BAIER: It is, and does that suggest a linkage that the Democrats are continuing to make?
ROBERTS: Two things. It suggests a linkage between two friends, and the second thing is the last time I'd checked, this is the United States of America and people in politics ought to have friendships and work together. the left wants to disallow that because they realize that their policy record over the last three and a half years in particular, is ending the American dream.
BAIER: Are you surprised by all this attention and all this vitriol around this document? Are you surprised by it when it started happening?
ROBERTS: I'm surprised by the scope of it, to be sure. I'm not surprised that it happened. And the lesson that we've learned, and and and we've learned loud and clear, is that when we do this again, and we're going to do it every election cycle, because it's what Heritage does, that when the left begins to mischaracterize, figuratively, we're gonna punch him back in the news.
And by that, I assume he means more lie-filled propaganda segments like this one on friendly "news" networks where they can try to gaslight Americans about what their intentions really are. They really don't like the attention they've been given. They'd rather operate in the dark. None of us can allow that to happen ever again.
