Tucker Carlson promoted Heritage's Project 2025 — but never mentioned Project 2025 by name
Written by Madeline Peltz
Published
Tucker Carlson read an advertisement for The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 in a recent interview posted to his profile on X (formerly Twitter).
Notably, Carlson did not cite the initiative by name but instead praised Heritage for leading “a coalition of over a hundred right-leaning groups” (the project’s advisory board), developing “detailed policy proposals” (a nearly 900-page policy book titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise), and promoting a “training and vetting program to identify effective conservatives to serve in the next presidential administration” (Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy).
Since Project 2025 received major public backlash for its extreme proposals, The Heritage Foundation has reportedly attempted to shift away from using the initiative's now-toxic name — per Talking Points Memo, a recent fundraising email referred to Project 2025 as a “rescue plan.”
Citation From Tucker Carlson on X, posted on October 7, 2024
TUCKER CARLSON: Heritage has pulled together a coalition of over a hundred right-leaning groups to develop a comprehensive plan for day one. That would include detailed policy proposals on the most pressing issues, the big ones — securing the border, controlling inflation, cracking down on election fraud, protecting the rights of the individual, and saving the nation from being crushed by woke anti-human ideology. The team at Heritage has also developed a plan to dismantle the deep state that keeps this nonsense going and reclaim this nation from the small group of technocrats that’s broken everything.
Heritage is also running a training and vetting program to identify effective conservatives to serve in the next presidential administration. People who will share your values — this country’s values — and actually do the job. It can’t just be the same pool of discredited people from Washington populating every administration.
Heritage has a long headstart, and they’ve put in a lot of work already, but they need your support to finish the job and to support the incoming president. You can go to heritage.org/tucker and contribute to this important work today. A lot depends on it.
Carlson also posted a paid partnership with The Heritage Foundation with a link to a fundraising page asking his followers for donations to the conservative think tank. The page quotes Carlson saying he is “proud to call” Heritage President Kevin Roberts “a close friend” and “true patriot.”
The fundraising page includes a promise that Heritage “is fighting to end America’s border crisis.”
“Leftist elites … want illegal immigration because it gives them an endless stream of future voters,” the page reads, echoing the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that Carlson played a central role in mainstreaming.
Project 2025 includes extreme policies against immigration, as has the Trump campaign. The initiative’s policy book advocates for potentially conducting mass deportations of millions of immigrants or those suspected to be immigrants in part by revoking all Temporary Protected Status designations, which would put more than 863,000 people at risk.
Citation Screenshot from the Heritage Foundation website
Anti-immigrant rhetoric was a central topic in Carlson’s rise as the most prominent white supremacist voice in conservative media before being fired from Fox News, and his extremism has only intensified since then. He recently conducted an interview with a right-wing podcast host pushing Nazi apologias and Holocaust denial. The interview aired shortly after Carlson spoke at the Republican National Convention.
Roberts later appeared at Carlson’s ongoing speaking tour in September. Carlson praised Heritage as “totally sincere about what they’re trying to do, which is to improve the country.”
Roberts later introduced himself: “I’m Kevin Roberts with Project 2025 and I’m here to help.”
Citation From the September 6, 2024 Tucker Carlson Live tour, posted to YouTube
Carlson and Roberts are both close allies of Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance. Carlson was reportedly a fierce advocate for adding Vance to the Trump ticket, having boosted his national profile through regular appearances on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight. Vance also wrote the foreword to Roberts’ now-delayed book Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America.
Carlson has longstanding ties with The Heritage Foundation — as the fundraising page says, he once worked there. Carlson was also the keynote speaker at the institution’s 50th anniversary gala in 2023.