On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains how Kevin Roberts' new book shows Project 2025’s intent to “control” women
Carusone: “They just don't like the idea that people have any control over when to have their children, in particular women”
Published
Citation
From the August 14, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Kevin Roberts could not contain his enthusiasm and excitement. Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation. He is the architect of the blueprint for turning our democracy into an autocracy, Project 2025. He was nearly giddy.
But in the weeks since, Roberts has seen both Trump and Vance try to distance themselves from him, pretty unsuccessfully, we should add, from him, from Project 2025, and from its radical and wildly unpopular agenda.
And Roberts himself has felt the backlash as well. So much so that the book Roberts wrote, which his friend, JD Vance, wrote the foreword to, suddenly had its publication date pushed back to after the November election.
Well, the progressive media watchdog group, Media Matters, got its hands on an advanced copy of that book that Roberts has written. It's titled "Dawn's Early Light, Taking Back Washington to Save America."
And in it, they find this: "Roberts repeatedly invokes revolutionary rhetoric. 'It's time for a conservatism of fire,'" he writes. Roberts also proposes a question to his readers asking this, "What's your Alamo? What are you dying for? There's a time for writing and reading and a time to put down the books and go fight like hell to take back our country and build our future."
Does that last line sound familiar?
[CLIP BEGINS]
DONALD TRUMP: We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country anymore.
[CLIP ENDS]
Good lord. Media Matters goes on to explain more of what Roberts writes in this book that has been, again, yanked from publication, but they found it.
To no one's surprise, the topics echo themes outlined in the 900 page Project 2025 mandate. There's the extreme anti-abortion rhetoric, a slamming of funding for public schools, attacks on unions, attacks on access to contraception.
As much as Trump and Vance repeat their "Project 2025 doesn't speak for me" defense, their connection to the man and everything in his plan is undeniable and inescapable. Just take Vance's own words in the book's foreward.
He refers to Robert's ideas as, "an essential weapon in the fights that lay ahead." And like Roberts' revolutionary rhetoric, Vance calls for readers to "circle the wagons and load the muskets."
NBC News has not yet reviewed the book. We have asked the publisher for an advanced copy of our own. In addition, we reached out to Roberts. We reached out to the Heritage Foundation and the book's publisher for a statement.
The ties between the GOP presidential ticket and Project 2025 is where we start the hour once again with the president of Media Matters for America, Angelo Carusone, and professor of history at NYU and author of "Strong Men: Mussolini to the Present," Ruth Ben-Ghiat.
Angelo, take me through the book.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): One thing that always sticks out at me since we went through the copy is this one part in the book. And it'll sound familiar because it -- and it explains partly why Vance was so willing to write the foreword -- where Roberts writes about the fact that he doesn't believe -- and argues -- that having a child should not "be an optional individual decision."
And what he argues for is that it's a societal one. That did not only take -- they should use soft means like pressures, but they should do everything possible from a policy perspective to take away that choice from individuals. That means banning contraception. That means taking a whole suite of issues against reproductive health and, you know, banning abortions. That is a massive overhaul.
And to me, the one through line throughout the book -- whether he's railing against education or he's arguing for rolling back unions and eliminating them and rolling back workplace safety protections, or even when he goes into this massive tangent about dog parks, which he's sort of angry about the fact that there are more people that have dogs than children which can't be entirely true -- that feels like one of the through lines, which is that fundamentally, if you just read it and you let it absorb, you're left with this idea that there's a bunch of childless people out there that are destroying the country, and that something really drastic is needed. And that is a theme that we've heard throughout Project 2025 and Roberts in order to stop them from ruining the country.
And that to me, is the big takeaway. There's lots of, like, little policy and narrative weaved in, but I just can't escape that one narrative because it seems to be the one thing that connects all the dots.
Otherwise, it's just a bunch of random musings from this guy.
...
WALLACE: Let me read from the book, because it is precious that we actually have the book itself.
And if we take all of our time doing that, it'll be an incredible service. Okay. So this is that section on IVF. "Once you understand this pattern, individual choice masking cultural upheaval, you will see it everywhere. In vitro fertilization, IVF seems to assist fertility, but has the added effect of incentivizing women to delay trying to start a family, often leading to added problems when the time comes."
This is the first time I understood their demented assault on IVF. It isn't just taking away choice, and what for a lot of families is a miracle, it's taking away the optionality of choosing the time when you start a family.
But what offends them about IVF is that a woman would pursue a career, and postpone having a family using the miracle science of IVF?
CARUSONE: Yeah. I mean, it gets back to this idea about, control.
And in a way, it's -- part of it is that he's reasserting control over women's bodies. And that's a through line that we've seen through some of the policies. Just now they're becoming much more explicit about what the intention is.
And they just don't like the idea that people have any control over when to have their children, in particular women. And you'd think that he would want IVF, right?
Because part of the book, part of the story line is that there's not enough children, there's not enough people having family, but it just goes to show you what the book is really about and what their philosophy and theory is really about, which is control.
And that ties into the authoritarian bedrock that a lot of what the book is about and Project 2025 and what Roberts is advocating for, is really built upon.
WALLACE: And here's the section that Roberts writes about childless society. "That's a problem because a childless society becomes decadent and nostalgic. Aging, barren societies literally become consumptive, taking on higher levels of debt and depleting savings as they pay foreign workers to keep things going. They become less and less capable of innovation, a young person's game, and more and more stuck and decrepit every year. Getting married and having kids, on the other hand, gives you skin in the game for the future of your country. It forces you to grow up, give up childish things, and live in the real world. It grounds you, gives you a sense of purpose in life, and helps generate community gratitude and joy, a culture of children is a culture of hope."
Again, if you close your eyes, that could be JD Vance talking in any one of the hundreds and hundreds of interviews and podcasts he did before he was tapped, Angelo.
CARUSONE: Yeah. And I'll just -- to book end that because it ties in with the example that I referenced before about the dog parks. Because he describes this dog park in Washington D.C. and he's really mad about it. There's a lot -- he's angry. And his whole theory about the dog parks is if you go to this, it's not just the size that he's mad about. It's the fact that he describes these people there that are angry and unhappy and miserable. He sort of paints this very bleak picture of childless people gathering around this very large dog park, and he blames Democrats and public policy for even allowing for such a facility to be built in order to accommodate these really depressing -- these sort of depressed angry people.
And to me, that's the illustration you're left with based off the description you just described is that he takes that sort of policy narrative and then he starts to put it into practice and he basically makes it seem that anyone that doesn't have a kid is miserable. And that not only are they miserable, but they're hurting everybody else as a result of it.
And, you know, I think, you know, when I go back to what JD Vance wrote in his foreword, I mean, he calls the book the essential blueprint for the future. I mean, he is adopting a lot of this philosophy wholesale and I think it sort of ties into why Roberts in the intro clip that you played was so excited to see him as the VP pick because Vance is an avatar for not just "Dawn's Early Light" and what's expressed there, that narrative, but the entire policy structure of Project 2025.
..
WALLACE: Angelo, it appears from the things that they're doing, and my colleague Rachel Maddow has always trained us to watch what they do, not what they say, that they are running for the hills.
They're trying to hide their extremism. They're trying to hide their associations with Vance and the Trump campaign.
Is that the case? And, you know, do you see them sort of going dark or going dormant between now November so that people won't learn how close and inextricably linked they are?
CARUSONE: It's not possible for them to go dark or dormant even if they want to, even if they try, even if that's their strategy.
And the reason why is because that's where all the kinetic energy is in Trump's space. All the kinetic energy there is in exactly this sort of philosophy, this worldview, this authoritarian bent.
And so this control of women and this is it. This is what they want. And so if they want to get their base moving again, have any chance of organizing, they're going to have to run towards where the energy is. That's it.
So, that's what I know. I can look at the tea leaves. I can see where the engagement is. This is what they want. They may try to see -- have be -- some sandpaper on the edges, and I think that's why they delayed this book. You know, maybe not put any more rakes for them to step on, try to smooth out some of the edges, but, ultimately, this is where the energy is.
This is where they're going to go, and this is what they really believe. But I think Ruth said something important, and I didn't mention it when I was talking, that a lot of this is also a veiled Christian nationalist world view.
You know, when one of the things Roberts talks about throughout his book, and I was thinking about it, I was listening to your discussion, was this idea that, you know, we -- using revolutionary language, talking about the fact that we have to get -- that we have to bring the rest of the world back to its natural order using -- so using a lot of Christian religious language, and he just described the natural order of things as the western world view and the American world view.
And I think that's where the tie in here is that religiosity and that Christian nationalism is, again, what this is about, and we just have to make sure they're not able to mask it.
And you've been doing really good work and a lot of others to not let them run as much as they are. Just keep that spotlight on them.
WALLACE: We will do that with your help.