Roberts Allegedly Killed A Dog With A Shovel

2004: Roberts Told Colleagues And Dinner Guests He Killed A Neighbor’s Pit Bull With A Shovel Because It Had Been Barking Relentlessly. According to The Guardian, “The man behind Project 2025, the rightwing policy manifesto that includes calls for a sharp increase in immigrant deportations if Donald Trump is elected, told university colleagues about two decades ago that he had killed a neighborhood dog with a shovel because it was barking and disturbing his family, according to former colleagues who spoke to the Guardian. Kevin Roberts, now the president of the Heritage Foundation, is alleged to have told colleagues and dinner guests that he killed a neighbor’s pit bull around 2004 while he was working as a still relatively unknown history professor at New Mexico State University. ‘My recollection of his account was that he was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem,’ said Kenneth Hammond, who was chair of the university’s history department at the time.” [The Guardian, 9/24/24]

Roberts and Project 2025

August 2024: Roberts Took Over Day-To-Day Management Of Project 2025. According to The Washington Post, “Roberts took over day-to-day management of Project 2025 last week with the departure of director Paul Dans. The project is winding down its policy work in anticipation of handing off its recommendations to the official presidential transition. The project will continue to operate a database of 20,000 applicants for Republican political appointments. Participants are still drafting executive orders and conducting training classes for potential future administration officials, a person involved in the project said. In private, the person said, Roberts has told people Trump isn’t really that mad, instead attributing the backlash to top Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.” [Washington Post, 8/7/24]

April 2024: Roberts Told The Washington Post He Had Discussed Project 2025 With Trump. According to The Washington Post, “Separately, Roberts told The Washington Post in an interview in April of this year that he had previously discussed Project 2025 with Trump as part of offering briefings to all presidential candidates. ‘I personally have talked to Pres lol ident Trump about Project 2025,’ he said in the interview, ‘because my role in the project has been to make sure that all of the candidates who have responded to our offer for a briefing on Project 2025 get one from me.'” [Washington Post, 8/7/24]

Roberts and Violent Rhetoric

July 2024: Roberts Called For A “Second American Revolution, Which Will Remain Bloodless, If The Left Allows It To Be.” According to The Washington Post, “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.” [Washington Post, 10/16/24]

2024: Roberts’s Book Called For A “Political Revolution” And For Institutions Like The Ivy League, The FBI, Fairfax County Public Schools In Virginia, And The Boy Scouts To Be Eliminated. That same month, Roberts started marketing his book, whose cover proposed ‘Burning Down Washington’ and featured an image of a match. Roberts used similar language in online promotional materials for his book. In early versions of the text reviewed by The Washington Post, Roberts called for ‘a political revolution’ to ‘overthrow today’s incarnation of the ruling class,’ argued that the nation ‘must be destroyed and replaced,’ and supported the elimination of institutions including the Ivy League, the FBI, Fairfax County (Va.) Public Schools and the Boy Scouts.” [Washington Post, 10/16/24]

Former Project 2025 Director Paul Dans Called On Roberts To Tone Down His “Violent Rhetoric And Bellicose Taunting.” According to The Washington Post, “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.'” [Washington Post, 10/16/24]

Roberts and Federal Workforce

September 2024: Roberts Called For Replacing Scientists At Federal Agencies With Political Appointees. According to The New York Times, “Mr. Roberts also defended the prescription in Project 2025 to replace career government workers with political appointees and get rid of the scientific advisory boards that offer expertise to federal agencies like the E.P.A. He said doing so would take the politics out of government decisions. For years, career scientists in agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have used peer-reviewed scientific research to document the impacts of climate change. In seeking to replace those scientists with political appointees, Mr. Roberts said a Trump administration would end ‘the politicized agenda they have used to be a cudgel against the American people.'” [New York Times, 9/25/24]

Roberts and Climate

September 2024: Roberts Said Climate Policies Like The Inflation Reduction Act Were “Harming People Far More Than Any Of The Harms That You Would Cite From So-Called Climate Change.” According to Mother Jones, “To Roberts, however, climate wasn’t the real issue. Progressive climate policies were. The Inflation Reduction Act, he said, was imposing the will of ‘elites’ on the American people by forcing a transition to clean energy and electric vehicles. (‘I’m very happy, by the way, in my diesel F-150,’ Roberts later joked, ‘because I enjoy my high carbon lifestyle.’) The energy transition, he argued, ‘has been so artificial, it has been so accelerated,’ he said, ‘that [it] is actually harming people far more than any of the harms that you would cite from so-called climate change.'” [Mother Jones, 9/25/24]