The Heritage Foundation sets its sights on Europe
Behind the thick velvet curtains of the Cercle de l'Union Interalliée, a lavish Parisian club on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, a high-profile political reception was taking place, just a stone's throw from the Elysée presidential palace. Ties were mandatory for the guests who, on the evening of May 26, gathered to soak up "the future of conservatism in France and in the West," as promised by the invitation card. The host was an American, unknown to the French public, who holds a piece of the United States' destiny in his hands. Kevin Roberts presides over the powerful Heritage Foundation, the most influential conservative think tank in the orbit of Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement. It paved the way for Donald Trump's return to power by providing him with the highly radical Project 2025, the unofficial blueprint for his term in office.
Bald, wearing a pin of Heritage's Liberty Bell-inspired logo on his jacket, Roberts, 50, displayed the articulateness of a university professor. Born in southern Louisiana, he has been one of the most zealous ideologues of Trump's second presidency, determined to "burn" everything – he has a penchant for radical metaphors – in order to reshape America into a nationalist and reactionary version of itself. Since 2021, he has led the Heritage Foundation and its 350 employees. The historian by training earns nearly $1 million a year in this role. He is a regular at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's residence, and has developed a genuine friendship with JD Vance, the 40-year-old nationalist-Catholic vice president, who is idolized by the far right on both sides of the Atlantic.
Roberts is above all one of the unofficial envoys for a major objective of Trump's second term: weaving a network with "civilizational allies in Europe," as the US State Department put it in a strategic memo published on May 27. The document mentions the Trump team's intent to promote their vision of a "shared cultural heritage," stretching from Paris to Warsaw. At the end of May, Roberts traveled to France for the first time, with that very goal in mind.
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