After Project 2025, Knives Are Out for Heritage — On the Right

Instead of just sniffing about Roberts’ deviations on trade or foreign affairs, the bitterness these days focuses on a new house style that allegedly enabled the current embarrassment: an elevation of marketing over research; a chest-thumping tendency to assert dominance within the Trump-era right; an inability to distinguish partisan agitation from policy advocacy because “engagement on X, positive feedback from Slack channels or mentions in their news feeds” have become paramount, in the words of one conservative activist who watched Project 2025 take shape. Roberts told an interviewer earlier this year that the mission was “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Heritage fundraising bragged about the large percentage of the think tank’s previous ideas that were implemented by Trump. Roberts also claimed Project 2025 spoke for the movement, boasting that “never before has the American conservative movement been this unified around a set of possible policy prescriptions.” This vibe added up to a problem because no politician, especially Trump, enjoys being talked about like a trained monkey for some policy group, no matter how fervent its support. “For six months before this came out, I knew more than several people who were nervous about the press that was out there,” one former Heritage staffer said, referencing Trump world’s anxieties about Project 2025’s media image.