Harris Campaign Claims Vance Supports Project That Didn’t Exist

Vice President Kamala Harris’ rapid response team shared a clip from a 3-year-old episode of The Federalist Radio Hour as a “stunning new leak” to claim J.D. Vance supports a conservative think tank’s project to staff the next administration.

On Saturday, the Harris campaign published an interview between Vance with then-Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech and then-Editor Chris Bedford to allege the Republican senator from Ohio “completely endorses Project 2025.” The podcast, however, was taped and published before Vance had even launched his Senate candidacy and almost a year before the Heritage Foundation unveiled its project.

“In a stunning new leak,” a Harris campaign account wrote on X of the public clip, “JD Vance completely endorses Project 2025. Donald Trump can’t turn run from this now.”

The clip promoted by the Harris team features Vance, then a venture capitalist, speaking in 2021 about the need for conservatives to escalate their tactics to exercise power. The businessman-turned-turned lawmaker referenced efforts to expand the Supreme Court and the number of members in the Senate as examples where incumbent Democrats are ruthlessly eager to maintain their grip on the country.

“I think the challenge confronting American conservatives is that we have lost every major powerful institution in the country,” Vance said, “except for maybe churches and religious institutions which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been.”

“We have lost big business, we’ve lost finance, we’ve lost the culture, we’ve lost the Academy,” Vance added. “If we’re going to actually really affect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class.”

Vance hammered identity politics in the same interview, admonishing politicians like Vice President Kamala Harris who lecture white Americans dying of opioid overdoses as “privileged.”

“We know of course that opioids overdoses, while they touch all walks of life, they are disproportionately concentrated among working class white Americans,” Vance said. “If you’re talking constantly about white privilege, I think what you’re doing is you’re using that as a cudgel against people who are really suffering whether they’re overdosing themselves or their communities are affected by these drugs, and it gives you an excuse to ignore them.”

Project 2025

The Harris campaign published the clip to charge Vance with promoting what’s become a boogeyman of the far-left. In 2022, the Heritage Foundation unveiled a nearly 1,000-page proposal for the next Republican administration that includes recommendations for policy changes and personnel.

The think tank’s project became a vehicle of leftist fearmongering this summer when far-left pundits fabricated a list of the project’s claims. President Joe Biden, for example, warned supporters that Project 2025 represents a “dangerous takeover” of the federal government by Republicans who want to “enact a national abortion ban.”

“A national abortion ban is nowhere to be found in the policy outline,” Federalist intern Monroe Harless corrected this month, “which insists conservatives should ‘recogn[ize] the many women who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations.’”

Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi also reviewed the Heritage Foundation’s proposed agenda, comparing it with claims made by the leftist media.

“Project 2025 is not a game, it’s white Christian nationalism,” Marvel star Mark Ruffalo warned. “It is the Sharia Law of the ‘Christian’ crazy people who aren’t Christian at all but want to control every aspect of your life through their narrow and exclusionary interpretation of Christ’s egalitarian, inclusive, and kindly teachings.”

But “The policy guide features eight mentions of ‘God’ in the entire document, most of those noting our ‘God-given individual rights to live freely,’” Harsanyi noted. “Though this might be offensive to Politico writers or ‘New Right’ intellectuals who’ve abandoned ‘liberalism,’ it is one of the foundational ideas of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.