The former director of the right-wing policy and personnel blueprint known as Project 2025 is condemning what he sees as “violent rhetoric” from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and calling on Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance to retract the foreword he wrote for Roberts’s book.
“If we’re going to ask the left to tone it down, we have to do our part as well,” Paul Dans, who led Project 2025 until July, said in an interview. “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, who took over Washington’s preeminent conservative think tank in 2021, declared a “second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be,” during an appearance on a pro-Trump podcast in July, before a gunman attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
That same month, Roberts started marketing his book, whose cover proposed “Burning Down Washington” and featured an image of a match.
Roberts declined to be interviewed. Heritage spokesman Noah Weinrich said Roberts’s remark on the podcast was meant to warn of left-wing violence.
“Any attempt to mischaracterize Dr. Roberts’ comments as supportive of violence is grotesque and completely contrary to the observation he was making,” he said.