JD Vance says it’s time to ‘load the muskets’ in foreword on new Project 2025 book

JD Vance has said that it is “time to circle the wagons and load the muskets” in a foreword to a book on the controversial Project 2025.

The Ohio Senator – Donald Trump’s running mate for the 2024 presidential race – also praised the leader of the project despite the former president previously denying all connection to it.

Amazon’s listing of the book, Dawn’s Early Light, describes it as outlining “a peaceful ‘Second American Revolution’ for voters looking to shift the power back into the hands of the people.

The listing notes Project 2025 head Kevin Robert as its author and Vance as the foreword. He also left an editorial review of the book in which he praises its ideas as “an essential weapon” in “the fights that lie ahead.”

In the foreword, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, Vance used the analogy of a garden to describe the US, writing: “To bring the garden back to health, it is not enough to undo the mistakes of the past.

“The garden needs not just to stop adding a terrible solution, though it does need that. It needs to be recultivated... As Kevin Roberts writes, ‘It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.’

“We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”

Project 2025 is a 900-page plan drawn up by former Trump aides and endorsed by powerful right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation – of which Roberts is also the president. It aims to give the former president a roadmap for his second administration.

The sprawling plan details plans to, should Trump regain the White House in November, expand his executive authority, replace civil servants with ideologically aligned appointees, crush abortion rights and impose an anti-immigrant agenda, among other policies.

“Dawn’s Early Light blazes a promising path for the American people to take back their country,” the book’s description on Amazon reads.

Trump has previously claimed he knows “nothing” about Project 2025, nor “who is behind it.” Vance’s foreword to the book may throw this further into doubt.

When asked about the plan during an interview with NBC earlier this month, and prior to his ascendency to Trump’s running mate, Vance did not explicitly deny the former president’s knowledge of it.

"I want to be clear here that Trump explicitly has said his own transition team runs the Trump transition and will run the Trump administration,” he said.

“Again, you have a whole host of organizations, some of which have good ideas, some of which have bad ideas, and some of which have both.

"And I’m sure the Trump administration will talk to a lot of people as it’s crafting an agenda… What the media and the Democrats are trying to do is attach its most unpopular elements to the Trump administration.

“It’s a 900-page document. I guarantee there are things that Trump likes and dislikes about that 900-page document. But he is the person who will determine the agenda of the next administration."

The Independent has attempted to contact representatives for Vance for comment about his remarks in the foreword.