As Donald Trump paused briefly to fix his tie in a floor-length mirror at the Palm Beach Convention Center, a thousand miles away inside the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., staff rushed to quickly put out a prepared statement congratulating the president-elect.
Exactly 15 minutes before Trump walked on stage, and while most of the television networks were still waiting to project the winner, an email from Heritage landed in the inboxes of political reporters everywhere. “We look forward to this historic term,” wrote Kevin Roberts, “during which President Trump has an opportunity to make America great, healthy, safe, and prosperous once again.”
Added the Heritage chief, “the entire conservative movement stands united behind him.” But does Trump need them in his administration? Does Trump want them after the campaign headaches they caused?
As the Republican candidate closed in on 270 electoral votes, Roberts told RealClearPolitics that the drama was in the past. “The political season is behind us, and we’re now in the policy-making season,” he said. After all, added the Project 2025 architect, “Heritage as an enterprise exists for the policy, not the politics.” Ahead of the second Trump season, he believes the relationship with the president-elect has been repaired.
“We will leave the political decisions to the smart campaign people, but now that we’re in the policy-making world,” he said, “I don’t see how you have a conservative administration without, not just Heritage, but the 110 other groups that are part of the project.”
Heritage has worked with every Republican president since Ronald Reagan to staff their administrations and stock their libraries with policy proposals. Trump quickly embraced the think tank during his first term, heralding them as “titans in the fight to defend, promote, and preserve our great American heritage.” But the conservative behemoth may have jeopardized that special relationship when liberals turned their efforts to plan for a second Trump term into an effective campaign foil.
“Just google Project 2025,” Vice President Kamala Harris said of the thinktank’s blueprint for how Trump ought to govern if returned to the White House. At nearly every campaign stop, the Democratic nominee would urge voters to go “read the plans for yourself.” And voters did. A lot of them. At one point in the home stretch of this campaign, Google searches for “Project 2025” exceeded those for “Taylor Swift.” The 900-page collection of white papers went viral, and Trump’s campaign was spooked. Denunciations from Republicans followed, including from Howard Lutnick, who declared anyone associated with the Heritage endeavor “radioactive.”
“There is no door, and there is no key, for Project 2025 into the Trump-Vance transition,” Lutnick told RCP ahead of the October vice-presidential debate. The CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald would know: Trump named him and Linda McMahon as co-chairs of his transition. She handles the policy. He oversees personnel. “So, if someone tried to send me a resume,” Lutnick said of staff associated with the endeavor, “they’d get an ‘I’m sorry’ back. Radioactive means ‘no thank you.’”
But that was during the campaign. Now that the transition has started, the Trump team must screen tens of thousands of applicants to decide who will staff the rank-and-file of the coming administration. A LinkedIn-style database of true believers, like the one Heritage built, could be a handy thing.
Trump previously feigned ignorance of Project 2025. “I’m not going to read it,” he said during the debate of the policy book put together by his favorite think tank. The Heritage proposals, many of them written by conservative alums of his administration, had become a political liability. Said Trump campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita over the summer, Project 2025 had become a “pain in the ass.” A viral moment from the head of Heritage didn’t help.
“We are in the process of the second American Revolution,” Roberts said in a July interview on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, “that will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Roberts told RCP that liberals had “twisted” the meaning of his words to mean the opposite of what he intended, namely that he hoped for sweeping but peaceful reform. And when the director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, stepped down that month, the Trump campaign said in a press release that the demise of the endeavor “would be greatly welcomed.” RealClearPolitics was first to report months later that Dans did not resign but was fired. Regardless, the damage was done.
While the campaign distanced itself from Heritage publicly, the former president did not. In an episode not previously reported, Trump spoke with Roberts twice over the summer. The message was not a denunciation. It was a request to turn down the volume. Roberts complied.
Heritage told every reporter who would listen that they did not speak on behalf of any campaign. And as RCP first reported, Roberts even delayed publication of his forthcoming book, “Dawn’s Early Light,” until after the election. The forward was written by a close friend of the Heritage president – Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
One senior campaign advisor said that the drama had blown over, especially after the anti-Heritage arguments failed to blunt Trump’s election win. “The notion of Project 2025 is dead forever, but Kevin is not in a bad spot. Trump and Kevin talk,” the advisor said. Roberts isn’t in line for a plum position in the new administration, the source added, “but he doesn’t want that, and it’s not what he needs.”
Heritage instead operates according to the principle that personnel is policy. The organization believes, as all Washington Beltway think tanks do, that if they can get their people in key positions, they can shape the administration. For them, a necessary symbiosis may save the day. Trump needs people on Day One who are loyal and competent. Explained a senior Trump official who served in the previous administration, Heritage is so vast and well-connected that if the transition blacklists anyone associated with them, “they will find about three people in town. Good luck.”
“President-Elect Trump will begin making decisions on who will serve in his second administration soon. Those decisions will be announced when they are made,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to RCP.
According to another senior Trump advisor, the wounds are still fresh. “There hasn’t been and won’t be a reconciliation with anyone associated with Project 2025. If Heritage had any sense, publicly admit their error,” the source said before adding, “they tried to publicly hijack a presidential campaign’s message, and those things are not easily forgiven.”
Yet, some Heritage alumni have made their way to the transition team. A few are reportedly helping to run it. Robert Wilkie, a former Veterans Affairs secretary in the first Trump administration, is leading the Defense Department’s transition team. He was previously a visiting fellow at the think tank. John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence, is now helping to plan national security policy. He is a visiting fellow at Heritage.
Loyalty remains the top criteria for the president-elect, and while Project 2025 remains contentious, several of its contributing authors were among his most loyal lieutenants.
Russ Vought, the president of the Center for Renewing America who served in Trump’s cabinet as OMB director, wrote a chapter on executive action. Stephen Moore, who advised the Trump White House on tax policy, contributed to a section on the U.S. Treasury. Peter Navarro, a senior trade advisor in the last administration who spoke at the Republican convention this summer, wrote half the chapter on trade.
It isn’t unusual for think tanks to prepare policy that they hope an incoming administration makes law. Heritage has been writing blueprints since Reagan, and during the Trump administration, many of their suggestions were enacted. The difference this time was their ability to corral more than 100 different conservative organizations under the Project 2025 banner. That and the Democrats pushed them into the spotlight at their convention.
The Harris campaign printed an oversized copy of the 900-page policy portfolio and sent numerous speakers on stage with it in Chicago. Kenan Thompson, a comedian from “Saturday Night Live,” took his and exaggeratedly thumped it on the lectern to plenty of laughter. “Y’all remember this big old book, from before?” he bellowed. “You ever see a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time?”
Funny line, and it got laughs. But one thing Project 2025 couldn’t do? Deliver for Democrats. The Harris attacks against Heritage flopped on Election Day.
“Their lies and failure are consistent with everything the left touches,” Roberts said, looking back and pointing to past Biden-Harris failures like rising inflation. Added the Heritage chief, on the eve of policy-making season, “We celebrate President Trump’s historic victory and look forward to a new golden age of conservative governance.”
