Democrats and Legacy media have set their sights on Project 2025. In this episode we sit down with Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation to discuss the project and what it actually does. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.
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The Heritage Foundation has played an increasingly prominent role in Republican administrations, including by helping to inform policy and personnel decisions. The Foundation's new project 2025 hopes to resource a Trump administration in a more comprehensive way than ever before, but it's also generated some controversy and criticism from Democrats and the legacy media. In this episode, we sit down with the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, to discuss the project and how the national landscape has changed after the momentous developments of this week. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley, it's Thursday, July 18th, and this is an RNC Extra Edition of Morning Wire. College is expensive, but being a man shouldn't be. Score 60% off Jeremy's Razor's one-year bundle and dominate campus life. While others can form, you'll stand out, clean-shaven and unapologetic. Major in masculinity at jeremysraisers.com today. Joining us now in the Morning Wire booth at the RNC is president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts. Thank you so much for joining us, Kevin. John, it's a pleasure. So let's start with the project 2025. There's been a lot of buzz about this project in the headlines, but first, for those who aren't familiar, what is the purpose and the goals of Project 2025? Project 2025 is the newest version of something Heritage has done since 1980 for Ronald Reagan, which is two things, to provide policies and personnel, obviously up to the president of the United States and his advisors, right? The whole point of the project this year is to reflect a somewhat fractious conservative movement. So for the first time in our history to sum up here, Project 2025 isn't just a heritage product, but it is the product of 110 conservative organizations showing that there's sort of like a restaurant menu. Here's a menu of policy options. Here are several thousand people who are willing to go into the next conservative administration. Should the president and his advisors so choose? And I think the key thing to know about Project 2025 is that the left has totally mischaracterized it. If you want to know about it, you ought to look at it rather than listen to the mainstream media. I wanted to ask you next exactly about that. So there's been a lot of controversy, a lot of hand-wringing and claims that are pretty extreme about what Project 2025 is attempting to do. Can you talk us through what it actually is doing as compared to what the claims about it are? The best place to start is to understand the motivation of Project 2025 from a policy point of view, and that is to devolve power from Washington, D.C. And so we do want to dismantle the administrative state. There are 2.2 million federal employees. I assume all of them are great people. It's not about them as persons. It's to say that that is a reflection of something that's been true our entire lifetimes. And that is Washington is too powerful, it's too strong. It's too driven by radical leftist ideology. And so the reason there has been this mischaracterization is that Project 2025 is over the target, meaning the figurative target of devolving that power from the left in D.C., back to the states and to the people. In terms of specific things that have been said, I won't repeat the mischaracterizations, but I will say that what you will see under Project 2025, if President Trump implements some of its key policy recommendations, is closing the border, ending the Green New Deal, revitalizing the economy by a massive effort of deregulation, and to say something that Project 2025 has a plan for that President Trump has been explicit about, ending the U.S. Department of Education. These are the kinds of things that the project doesn't just discuss, but lays out in a very think-tank kind of way in terms of the policy plan that would exist. And ultimately, to sum up, when people actually learn about Project 2025, invariably they write us and say, "Gosh, this isn't bad at all." It makes a lot of common sense. Right. Now, part of this process has been vetting people that could go into the administration and be very effective, hit the ground running. Can you talk about that process? Yeah, in a lot of ways, that's the most important thing. This is motivated by Ronald Reagan's comment that people are policy. And so what we decided to do two and a half years ago when we embarked on this very ambitious project was to assemble a personnel database, not just for the next presidential administration, and not just for the presidential administrations that follow, but for the conservative movement period. And the reason we have done that is because as I travel the country, people tell me, "Kevin, we would like a plan, and I want to be part of that plan if the president and his people choose." The conservative movement has never had this apparatus. The left has had this forever. By the way, one of the reasons the left is so apoplectic is that we've simply taken a page out of their playbook by putting together this database for people. We have close to 14,000 Americans who have submitted their names, their resumes, they've gone through the training for potential positions. All of that up to the next administration, obviously. But the key thing is they're apoplectic because this is a threat to their power. But in other words, is a threat to their power. That individual everyday Americans want to be part of the process rather than sit on the sidelines. So the project isn't going anywhere. How confident do you feel that Trump is going to use this as a resource in his new administration if he wins? I'm confident but not presumptuous, right? The whole point of Project 2025 is not to be presumptuous. The whole point of Project 2025 is merely to assemble the policies and the personnel knowing that great ideas and great people rise to the top. President Trump is one of the greatest CEOs in modern history, both as President and his business leader. He and his people will make those determinations. But I think the ideas and the people will speak for themselves. We'll see in two or four or six years, you know, what percentage of them have been hired or implemented and whatever that is is fine. The key thing is this project represents the entire conservative grassroots movement. So for that reason, not because of the label Project 2025, we're confident that to some extent or another those ideas and people will be part of the mix. How well does Project 2025 align with the GOP platform? Overwhelmingly so is I like to tell people there are three lanes. There's the Trump campaign, there's the RNC and the RNC platform and then there's Project 2025. In other words, sort of the grassroots movement. And as you would expect, because all three of those lanes are dominated by conservative philosophy, there's tremendous overlap. There are certainly some differences of opinion, but if I get two conservatives together, I have never gotten a hundred percent agreement, right? We're not like the collectivist left where we have to march in lockstep. The point is not to get unanimity of opinion. The point is to present a menu of options. And if the president chooses one of those options for him and for his advisors to know, there's actually not just a plan, but there is support from the conservative movement. You know, what we like to call air cover, in terms of communications and messaging and media, rather than the movement being caught flat-footed by Trump's great instincts in 2016 and 2017. Right. Now this week, I wanted to kind of step back. This has been a momentous week on so many levels. We had an event over the weekend that really shocked the nation shocked the world and changed the equation in many ways for both campaigns. How do you think the events of this last week, including that ruling by Judge Eileen Cannon, have affected the strategy, the mood of the voters of the parties, how have things changed? In a couple of ways, the first is the obvious, which is regardless of someone's politics. We don't want any of our political leaders being assassinated, right? It's always awful for the United States. And I believe that about the vast, vast majority of people on the political left, they don't want that to happen. There are, you know, a couple of crazies, but that's not all of them. And so there's this mood of being somber about what almost happened in addition to the tragic loss of life with Corey Campantor. But the second thing is, interestingly, over the last few days, there's this emerging energy. Maybe because people see the hand of providence in this, I know President Trump does. We see that emotional moment when he stepped out onto the convention floor for the first time. It was emotional even for him. Americans realize this. That moment, maybe Donald Trump as a person, really do exemplify this crossroads juncture that we're at in America. And up until that point, Americans were really pessimistic about what that path might look like. But now they see in their fellow Americans the kind of faith and trust we've had most of our lifetimes, regardless of politics. If those of us who are involved in politics and policymaking do a good job, political leaders, unelected people like me and my colleagues at the Heritage Foundation of saying this is the moment, let's be hopeful, let's be resolute, then I actually think we're going to see the ushering in of a golden era, not just of conservative policy, but also of faithfulness in this country. And that should make us really hopeful in this moment. Certainly a good message to hear. And we're so appreciative of you coming here and talking with us and we'll talk soon. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm a huge fan and subscriber, so I just love being here. That's what I was fishing for. I knew it. Alright, that was Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire. (upbeat music) (clicking)
Democrats and Legacy media have set their sights on Project 2025. In this episode we sit down with Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation to discuss the project and what it actually does. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.
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