Kevin Roberts ventured into unfriendly territory Saturday morning to face hostile questions from MSNBC hosts Symone Sanders-Townsend and Michael Steele. His masterful performance exposed their radical views on immigration and scaremongering about Project 2025.
Five months after schooling the global elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, The Heritage Foundation president once again found himself in the lion’s den.
This time, the conversation centered on illegal immigration and Project 2025, the Heritage-led coalition that’s supplying policy ideas and personnel to the next presidential administration.
Sanders-Townsend, a former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders, President Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris, fully embraced the Left’s lawless approach to immigration. At one point, she even scolded Steele, the former Maryland lieutenant governor and Republican National Committee chairman, for uttering the word “illegal immigrant.”
Roberts was challenging the two liberal hosts on heinous crimes committed by illegal aliens when Steele began to ask, “What is the difference between an illegal immigrant, who, unfortunately, engages in that activity?”
But even before he could finish, Sanders-Townsend interrupted. “I want to be clear; we don’t use the term illegal. They’re undocumented individuals.”
“That’s sweet,” Roberts replied. “They’re illegal aliens.”
Steele, at one point during the segment, suggested he was ready to move on, but Roberts appeared to relish the debate. “I’ll stay as long as you want,” he retorted.
The hosts pressed Roberts on securing the border and deporting those who have entered the United States illegally.
“We need to have the biggest mass deportation system ever in the history of America because it is unjust, illegal, and evil that more than 10 million illegal aliens have come to this country,” Roberts said.
Just this week, another American family faced the tragic consequences of illegal immigration. The Houston Police Department announced the arrests of illegal aliens Johan Jose Rangel Martinez and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, who face capital murder charges in the death of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray.
“You are weaponizing a horrific murder to smear 11 million people,” Sanders-Townsend told Roberts.
Later, during a separate appearance on Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” Roberts said he was most disappointed by Steele’s response.
“I was appalled that [Steele] accused us of using an ‘anecdote’ to make a larger point,” Roberts told Bannon. “That anecdote is the human life of a 12-year-old girl in Houston. That anecdote is that college-aged young lady in Georgia. That anecdote is now dozens, several dozens, of American citizens who’ve been killed by illegal aliens.
“The only way that you can begin to try to make sense of that position, that Steele and others are holding, is that they simply don’t weigh the importance of American citizenship.”
In another discussion on Project 2025—which has become an infatuation of left-wing media—the MSNBC hosts quizzed Roberts about his ideas for overhauling the federal workforce.
“If Heritage is calling for removing 50,000 federal employees, who are you replacing them with?” Steele asked.
“The number needs to be more than 50,000 considering that there are more than 2 million federal employees,” Roberts responded. “Over the last century, the radical Left has seen the administrative state as the fourth branch of government. They’re unelected bureaucrats. … Ultimately, we have to devolve power from the imperial city of Washington back to the people.”
In his subsequent appearance with Bannon, Roberts said Project 2025 frightens the Left because conservatives have a plan that will restore the constitutional republic. He also sounded a note of optimism that it’s resonating with the American people, even if it hasn’t yet penetrated the MSNBC newsroom.
“They literally live in a social bubble of Washington, D.C., or New York City, or the left coast,” Roberts told Bannon. “And, therefore, they have lost sight of the fact that it isn’t just among American conservatives, it’s also American centrists, even a handful of American liberals, who understand that this country is in really bad shape for a lot of reasons.”
