Thus far, the Republican National Convention’s speakers have undermined some conservatives’ claims that this year’s event would focus on promoting national “unity.”
Remarkably, though, some of the most disturbing speeches from right-wingers this week have come not from the main stage, but rather from a few blocks away at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the group that coordinated the drafting of Project 2025, a far-right plan to increase Donald Trump’s power and politicize federal agencies if he’s elected in November.
The Heritage Foundation’s Policy Fest, an extremist-fueled speaker series keynoted by fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson, unfolded just down the street from Fiserv Forum, where the RNC is taking place. The physical distance seems to have been strategic. Trump has tried to publicly distance himself from Project 2025, though several of its authors were members of his administration. So perhaps some Republicans thought holding a Heritage Foundation event that’s ostensibly separate from the RNC would help the GOP’s effort to appear less radical.
But Monday proved that plenty of GOP power brokers are all in on Project 2025 and the politics that inspired it. Heritage Foundation CEO Kevin Roberts doubled down on Project 2025, calling it “a plan among a unified movement to speak on behalf of the everyday American, the forgotten American.” In reality, it reads more like a plan to remake the government under Christian nationalist and far-right ideals that include defining heterosexual marriage as “biblically based,” supercharging religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws, withdrawing Food and Drug Administration approval of abortion medication and concentrating power in the presidency.
Carlson boosted these alarming ideas in his Policy Fest speech on Monday, telling the crowd the recent shooting at a Trump rally proved there is a “spiritual battle” underway and claimed liberals are motivated by an “anti-human” force that seeks to “eliminate” Christians. Carlson later decried the abundance of “weak men” unwilling to commit violence against school employees. He falsely claimed schools are trying to “indoctrinate” kids and turn them into “circus freaks” before he fantasized about harming school employees.
“In the country that I grew up in, the dad would just punch the counselor out. You know, ‘Put me in jail, I don’t care,’” Carlson said, before baselessly suggesting school counselors are engaging in “child molester stuff.”
He continued:
I just said I’m against violence, but that’s, like, a very basic — that’s the most basic requirement of fatherhood but also of leadership more broadly is to be willing to die for the people in your care, period. And if you’re not willing to do that, you’re contemptible.
Policy Fest featured several other speakers well-known among the MAGA faithful, including failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Tom Homan, acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration. Homan, whom Trump has said he would tap for a job if he’s elected again, tried to downplay Trump’s authoritarian goals related to immigration. Although Trump has publicly refused to rule out building camps for mass detention as part of his campaign’s vow to establish the most massive deportation effort in history, Homan claimed — without evidence — that a Trump immigration policy wouldn’t include any of the things reported in the media. “People say, ‘Trump’s threatening this historic deportation operation. He’s going to build concentration camps. He’s going to sweep neighborhoods,’” Homan said. “Let me be clear. None of that will happen.” He went on to issue a warning that seemed to apply not only to newly arriving immigrants but also to recipients of protections offered under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, too. “No one’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, it’s not OK. If you’re in the country illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. Recommended
