Ohio Senator. JD VanceDonald Trump’s running mate praised the vision of Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in the foreword to an upcoming book that could conflict with the Trump campaign. effort to distance yourself of Heritage’s Project 2025 transition effort.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the foreword to Roberts’ upcoming book, “Dawn’s Early Light,” on Tuesday, the same day as a change to Project 2025 that has become a major election year issue as Democrats and others argue what the nearly 1,000-page vision she presents is extreme.
“Never before has a figure of Roberts’ depth and stature within the American right attempted to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism,” Vance writes in his foreword. “The Heritage Foundation is not a random outpost on Capitol Hill; is and 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 destroy US institutions and start over, show the overlap between Trump’s closest allies and the people fueling Project 2025.
Trump’s top aides have repeatedly criticized Project 2025 organizers for what they say is a false impression that the transition effort is associated with the campaign. Following Tuesday’s change at Heritage, Roberts now directly leads Project 2025 operations.
The book, scheduled for release on September 24, outlines a vision for what its publisher calls “ a peaceful ‘Second American Revolution’.” Its subtitle is “Taking Back Washington to Save America,” although previous descriptions of the book listed it as “Burning Washington to Save America.”
O publisher description says it identifies institutions that conservatives need to build or restore, adding that some are “too corrupt to be saved”. Among those listed are Ivy League colleges, the FBI, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Department of Education and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The AP requested comment from spokespeople for Vance and the Trump campaign.
Additionally, on Tuesday, Paul Dans, who ran Project 2025, left the Heritage Foundation amid continued criticism of the plan. Roberts said his departure came after the project completed what he set out to do.
In his preface, Vance calls for more than the removal of the bad policies of the past, but rather “reconstruction.”
“We need an offensive conservatism, and not just one that tries to stop the left from doing things we don’t like,” Vance writes.
In closing, Vance quotes Roberts as saying that when dusk falls and a person hears wolves, “You need to circle the wagons and load the muskets.”
“Now we’re all realizing it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets,” adds Vance. “In the struggles that lie ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”
DNC spokesman Alex Floyd said in a statement that Vance’s language “echoes 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 a difficult upbringing, influential grandparents, and the Catholic faith. He also writes about fatherhood, which has been a controversial issue for him recently after an interview resurfaced where he said that the Democrats running the country are “childless hotties who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they have made and therefore want to make the rest of the country miserable as well.”
In the book, he praises the idea that we should “encourage our children to get married and have children,” and teach them that marriage is a sacred union, ideas that he says come from “the old American right that recognized – correctly, in my opinion – that cultural norms and attitudes matter.”
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Smith reported from Providence, Rhode Island, and Swenson from New York. Associated Press writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.
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