The president of the Heritage Foundation, a right-leaning think tank that has developed a series of policy plans to reform the federal government under Republican presidents, said Tuesday that the U.S. is “in the process of a second American Revolutionary War that will remain bloodless if the left allows it.”
The group's president, Kevin D. Roberts, made the comments during an interview on “The War Room,” a show hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, an adviser to President Trump, on the Real American Voice network. (Bannon himself did not host Tuesday's show because he had entered prison the day before to serve time for contempt of Congress.)
Roberts was discussing the Supreme Court's Monday ruling that presidents have effective immunity from prosecution for acts performed while in office. The ruling overturned a criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election and removed a potential barrier to the most extreme elements of Trump's second-term agenda if he is re-elected.
“We should all be really encouraged by what happened yesterday, and of course our friend Steve's friends and viewers of this show know, despite all the injustice, we are going to prevail,” Roberts said, referring to Bannon's imprisonment.
He went on to say that the “radical left” is “furious” because “our side is winning,” and “I just want to come full circle with this response and encourage you in a substantive way that we are in the process of a second American revolution, and that it will continue to be a bloodless revolution if the left allows it.”
“That's right. Thank you,” replied the interviewer, former Virginia Congressman Dave Brat.
The Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning about Roberts' remarks, which were published by the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America.
“America declared its independence from a tyrannical king, but Donald Trump and his allies are trying to make him a tyrant at our expense. On January 6th, they brazenly stormed the Capitol and attempted to overturn an election that Donald Trump fair and squarely lost, something not even the Confederacy could accomplish. Now they are dreaming of a violent revolution that will destroy the very idea of ​​America,” Biden campaign spokesman James Singer said in a statement referring to the upcoming Fourth of July holiday.
Trump's allies, and Trump himself, have a long history of extreme rhetoric and threats of violence against political opponents and the left in general, with actual violence occurring multiple times, most notably at the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and these rhetoric has escalated during the 2024 election campaign.
Trump has made many other statements, including saying shoplifters should be shot, suggesting the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed for treason, urging his supporters to “go after” the New York Attorney General who sued Trump for fraud, suggesting his supporters could become violent if the Supreme Court rules against him, and not ruling out political violence if Trump loses the November election.
Trump has also repeatedly dehumanized his political opponents and immigrants, using words like “vermin” and “poisoning the blood of our nation,” evoking Hitler and other authoritarian leaders, and over the weekend he reposted an image on social media declaring that former Republican congresswoman and prominent critic of his, Liz Cheney, should be tried for treason before a “televised military tribunal.”
The policy plan, which the Heritage Foundation helped coordinate with like-minded groups, is called Project 2025. It is not Trump's official policy platform; his campaign is referring to Agenda 47, which focuses on curbing immigration and promoting economic growth. Some of Project 2025's authors served in Trump's first administration or are expected to serve in those roles if he is re-elected.
While the Trump campaign stresses that Heritage is an outside organization and that proposals that Trump does not personally support should not be taken as a representation of his plans, there is significant overlap in some areas between Heritage's proposals and those proposed by Trump, including plans to centralize executive branch power and remove legal and personnel restrictions from Trump's first term.