JD Vance’s Foreword to Architect’s Project 2025 Book Could Further Implicate Trump

With less than a month under his belt as former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate, Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance has created another messaging problem for the Trump campaign.

Vance wrote the foreword for a book written by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, officially known as “Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise.” A proposed overhaul of the federal government based on a set of right-wing ideas, the document details plans to fire civil servants, expand presidential powers, disband the Education Department and stop selling the abortion pill, among other things.

Vance’s alarmist foreword to Roberts’ book, Dawn’s Early Light, which was obtained by New Republiccould undermine the narrative Trump has tried to maintain since Project 2025 became a major political issue against him:Nothing that I know of..”

Many of Trump’s former advisors were already involved in the creation Project 2025, but now his own vice presidential candidate has signed the materials prepared by this man who supported it.

Given the political stakes of the Trump campaign, the book’s publication date has been pushed back from September 24 to after the November election. “There’s a time to write, read, and tour—and a time to put the books away and fight like hell to take back our country. That’s why I’ve decided to push the publication and promotion of my book until after the election.” — Roberts he wrote in a statement to RealClearPolitics.

But the postponement of the release date has not silenced Trump’s critics, who continue to seize on Vance’s involvement as evidence of the former president’s loyalty to the conservative manifesto.

In his first speech as vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said, “J.D. Vance literally, literally wrote the foreword for the architect of Project 2025.”

Here’s what you need to know about Vance and the 2025 Project, and why the Trump campaign is trying to distance itself from the whole thing.

What did JD Vance say in his delayed foreword?

Vance did not mention the 2025 Project directly in his introduction, but he wrote that Roberts, who has served as the foundation’s president since 2021, is a kindred spirit to them because they both grew up in unstable environments, in families struggling financially, and because of the huge role their grandparents played in their lives.

He noted their common Catholic faith and how both men had traveled far from the worlds of their youth to come to the nation’s capital. “And now he’s working far from where he grew up, just a few steps from my office, in Washington, D.C.: he’s the president of one of the most influential think tanks in Washington, and I’m a U.S. senator,” Vance wrote.

But Vance’s connection to Roberts is about more than just identity. The senator wrote that Roberts’ book “explores many of the themes that I have focused on in my work” and praised the Heritage Foundation for being “the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”

The senator praised Roberts’ ability to call out corporations and endorsed Roberts’ family-centered conservatism. Vance himself said in 2021: “the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by childless people.” And that these childless people “actually have no direct stake” in the future of the country.

In his foreword, Vance writes that conservatives should listen to newborn people who say they can’t afford a home or start a family, to make it more affordable, but also encourage them to get married and have children. He states that “we should discourage behaviors that threaten the stability of their families.”

Using the analogy of a country represented by a well-tended garden with a few weeds that is destroyed by a “well-meaning gardener” — supposed to represent “modern liberalism” — with a weedkiller, Vance writes that for conservatives to “nurture the garden back to health,” a complete reset is needed.

“The old conservative movement said that if we just got rid of government, the forces of nature would solve the problems — we are no longer in that situation and we need to approach it differently,” Vance wrote.

He then quotes Roberts: “It’s all well and good to take a laissez-faire approach when you’re safe in the sunshine. But when it gets dark and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to round up the wagons and load your muskets.”

Vance ends his foreword with the same aggressive undertones.

“We all now realize that it is time to gather our strength and load our muskets,” Vance said. “These ideas are essential weapons in the battles to come.”

What has Vance said in the past about Kevin Roberts or the 2025 Project?

Vance is endorsed by the Heritage Foundation. Roberts said he and Vance are “good friends” and that the think tank was privately rooting for Trump to pick Vance as his vice presidential running mate. Roberts, according to the Associated Presssaid Vance understands “we have a limited time to implement policy.”

While Vance did not explicitly endorse Project 2025, he did say that “there are some good ideas”“in the proposal, although there are others with which he disagrees and maintains that the proposals do not reflect the Trump campaign.

Vance in March Story from Politico Before being selected as Trump’s vice presidential running mate, he expressed his plans to transform the Republican Party and restructure some key pillars of the USIn the same article, Roberts said Vance “will certainly be one of the leaders — if not the leader — of our movement.”

Senator he also praised Roberts for helping transform the organization “into a de facto institutional home of Trumpism.”

Still, a Vance spokesman reiterated the Trump campaign’s position on Project 2025.

“The introduction has nothing to do with Project 2025,” the spokesman said. he wrote in a statement to AP. “Senator Vance has said before that he has nothing to do with this and has many disagreements with what they are calling for. Only President Trump will set the policy agenda for the next administration.”

In Wisconsin on Wednesday, Vance said: “I think President Trump has said that Project 2025 does not reflect the Trump campaign agenda, and it does not.”

Why is Trump trying to distance himself from Project 2025?

The Trump campaign has vehemently denied the former president’s involvement in the project, although there are some suspicions. some overlap between Trump and the Republican platform and plan. The former president said it was ‘seriously extreme’ AND “absolutely ridiculous and pathetic.”

It is in the best political interest of the Trump campaign to cut off any possible connections. The project’s extreme views and the role that former Trump advisers played in steering the plan have already inspired viral anti-Trump monologues John Oliver AND Taraji HensonThe bill’s extreme positions on abortion and education in particular provide fuel for the Democratic offensive.

Before he dropped out of the presidential race, President Joe Biden illuminated Project 2025 on the campaign trail. At a rally in Michigan in early July, Biden said the project was “run and paid for by Trump’s people” and would create a “nightmare” in the country.

Harris has quickly adopted this message since becoming the Democratic nominee, making it a key part of her speeches at rallies. In one recent instance, Harris said the 2025 Project would be “weaken the middle class”during her visit to Wisconsin on Wednesday, which is part of her multi-stage stateside tour with Walz.

Harris’ campaign is also training volunteers in key battleground states “to highlight the most extreme aspects of Project 2025” when speaking to voters, according to a memo released Wednesday. reported by NBC News.

Even after Project 2025 CEO Harris stepped down the campaign maintains that “The 2025 Project is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his plan, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to impose on our country.”