The former director of Project 2025, a conservative plan to overhaul the US government, has blamed “violent rhetoric” from his former boss Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation thinktank, for the blueprint’s downgrading as Donald Trump has sought to publicly distance himself from it.
Paul Dans, who resigned as head of the project in July after it threatened to become an electoral liability for Trump, said it was damaged after Roberts made inflammatory comments in a podcast that were widely interpreted as a veiled threat against leftwingers if they resisted an envisioned conservative takeover.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Dans also called on Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, to withdraw a foreword he wrote for Roberts’ forthcoming book, which has been criticised for perceived violent undercurrents, partly due to its appeal to rightwingers to “load the muskets”.
“If we’re going to ask the left to tone it down, we have to do our part as well,” Dans told the newspaper. “There’s no place for this sort of violent rhetoric and bellicose taunting, especially in light of the fact that President Trump has now been subject to not one but two assassination attempts.”
Roberts made headlines in July when he told Dave Brat, a former Republican congressman who was presenting Steve Bannon’s podcast: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
The comments intensified scrutiny on Project 2025, a 922-page policy document detailing plans for – among other things – the mass firing of thousands of civil servants and a drastic curtailment of reproductive rights. The project had been run, in collaboration with other thinktanks, under the Heritage Foundation’s auspices and the ultimate authority of Roberts.
Trump subsequently sought to disown the project – in public at least – as the Democrats seized on Roberts’ remarks to highlight its most radical provisions and depict it as a roadmap for a second Trump presidency. The Republican nominee falsely claimed that he did not know its architects, even though many of them – including Dans – had served under him when he was US president.
Dans said he warned Roberts against media interviews and provocative language and squarely blamed his comments for damaging the project and those who had worked on it.
“There’s really no place for this level of rhetoric, let alone from the head of an august thinktank,” Dans said. “And by doing that, he’s essentially besmirched the professional reputations of everyone involved in Project 2025.”
Roberts has been criticised for using similarly strident terms in promoting his book, Dawn’s Early Light, whose original September publication date has been postponed until after next month’s presidential election.
Its original subtitle, Burning Down Washington To Save America, has been watered down and its cover illustration of a lit match has been removed.
Dans has also urged Vance – whose relationship with Roberts has undermined Trump’s efforts to dissociate himself from Project 2025 – to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation president by retracting the foreword he has written for his book.
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In it, Vance calls for a more aggressive conservative line of action, writing: “It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.’
A foundation spokesman, Noah Weinrich, dismissed Dans’ criticism and said Roberts’ podcast comments had been referring to the threat of leftwing violence.
“Any attempt to mischaracterize Dr Roberts’ comments as supportive of violence is grotesque and completely contrary to the observation he was making,” he told the Post.
Vance, whose links to the thinktank long predate his support for Trump has not commented.
Dans previously blamed Trump campaign officials for the downgrading of Project 2025’s status in the Republican nominee’s priority list. He singled out campaign aides Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita for publicly denigrating the project in a September interview with the New York Times and said they had jeopardised Trump’s chances of beating Kamala Harris.
