The Media Research Center was in the middle of trying to defend the Heritage Foundation’s right-wing Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump presidential term when it had to spend some time defending the head of that group, Kevin Roberts, who said that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be” — which sure sounds a lot like a plan to repress dissent if Donald Trump wins that second term. The MRC, of course, chose to serve up a Roberts-friendly interpretation that was an attack on his critics and those of Trump. Tim Graham huffed in a July 6 post that “The Democrats seized on the comments of Kevin Roberts, who was describing the tendency of the Left to riot. In reaction, the Heritage Foundation tweeted a video full of Democrat talk of violence and support of the rioting in 2020.” Graham whined that MSNBC host Amna Nawaz portrayed Trump as an “antidemocratic candidate with authoritarian tendencies,” and that her friends allegedly didn’t see that “relentlessly comparing Trump to Hitler is alarming or inflammatory.”
In a July 7 post, Mark Finkelstein cheered that Marco Rubio weaseled out of answering a question about Roberts’ remarks and played whataboutism instead:
Bash tried to put Rubio on the spot. She played a clip of a leader of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 saying “We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be,” and asked Rubio if he were comfortable with that. Rubio made the obvious and devastating reply: “Well, he’s not running for president, is he? Our candidate is Donald Trump, and he’s running on restoring common sense and working-class values.” He pointed out that in contrast, many of the lunatic ideas of the far left have actually become the policies of the Biden administration.
After that, though, it was back to defending Project 2025 itself. Clay Waters cheered in a July 10 post that the one of the project’s goals is to defund (and, thus, effectively censor) public broadcasting:
The Heritage Foundation’s attention-getting Project 2025 initiative, which so far has been more fear-mongered about than actually described, includes a blueprint of limited-government policy proposals for limited government, the 900-page “2025 Mandate for Leadership.” Among those proposals for the next president to peruse is a call to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds the liberal forums PBS (the Public Broadcasting “Service”) and National Public Radio on the taxpayer’s nickel.
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and member of the Free Speech Alliance led by the Media Research Center, laid out the case for denying federal money to those liberal outlets and provided historical context for defunding, noting that “Every Republican President since Richard Nixon has tried to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) of taxpayer funding.” And, has failed.
Gonzalez argued “the government should not be compelling the conservative half of the country to pay for the suppression of its own views,” and noted that “PBS and NPR do not even bother to run programming that would attract conservatives. And those conservatives are tuning out the programming they are obliged to support through their taxes.
[…]Defunding would also strip National Public Radio (and other, even further-left publicly funded entities like Pacifica Radio) of the advantage of being an official “noncommercial educational” (NCE) radio station, such as better placement on the radio dial and exemption from licensing fees.
Neither Waters nor Gonzalez didn’t explain why they approve of censorship of views they don’t agree with, or why public broadcasting must be forced to become right-wing propaganda.
The same day, Michael Wnek complained that MSNBC’s Joy Reid claimed that “warned that Republicans would elect Trump ‘as their Project 2025 dictator marionette, and the Leonard Leo Supreme Court conservatives as their star chamber.'” Wnek didn’t counter that claim.
Alex Christy used a July 11 post to downplay the importance of Project 2025 after a discussion of it on Stephen Colbert’s show:
Like so many on the left, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has become shorthand for the supposed nightmare that will fall on America should Trump win:
[…]In the real world, Project 2025 is just Heritage’s fancy name for its quadrennial Mandate for Leadership that it releases every four years as its wish list should the Republican win the presidential election.
The same day, Mary Clare Waldron lashed out at CNN’s Jim Acosta — a frequent MRC target — for talking about Project 2025:
As President Biden’s blunders flood the news, CNN Newsroom host Jim Acosta tried to switch the conversation back to Donald Trump on Thursday. As the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has been used to fearmonger in the past few weeks, Scott Jennings, political commentator for the network, took to the air to defend Trump, calling out Acosta’s agenda and the left in one fell swoop.
Following a “detailed” look at Project 2025, Acosta questioned Jennings on the number of conservatives who are part of the project:
[…]Jennings, calling out the simpleminded argument of Acosta, stated plainly, “They’re not the president, they’re not running for president. Heritage Foundation doesn’t appear on the ballot. The people working on this don’t appear on the ballot.”
It is not surprising that conservatives, being of a common mind, would be in similar circles. Yet, they aren’t synonymous, a point Acosta does not understand, so it fell to Jennings to educate him:
Waldron didn’t mention that her employer has used the same “simpleminded argument” to accuse all Democrats of supporting Hamas or Black Lives Matter.