Behind the thick velvet curtains of the Cercle de l'Union Interalliée, a sumptuous Parisian club in the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, a very political reception is held at a stone's throw from the Elysée. Rigor tie for guests who came, this evening May 26, to drink from “The future of conservatism in France and in the West”, As the invitation card promises. The host is American, unknown to the French public, and holds in his hands a piece of the fate of the United States. Kevin Roberts chairs the powerful Heritage Foundation, the most influential conservative think tank of the Maga galaxy (“Make America Great Again”), who paved the return to power of Donald Trump by providing him with the very radical project 2025, a roadmap of his mandate.
Smooth skull, small bell symbolizing the Liberty Bell American pinned to the Col de la Veste (the Heritage Foundation logo), Kevin Roberts, 50, displays the ease of university professors. This native in southern Louisiana is one of the most fervent ideologists of the second Trump presidency, determined to everything ” burn “ – He likes radical metaphors – to reshape America in a nationalist and reactionary version. At the head since 2021 of the Heritage Foundation and its 350 employees, the training historian wins in this position nearly $ 1 million per year. He is familiar with Mar-A-Lago, Villa of President Trump, and cultivates a real friendship with JD Vance, the 40-year-old vice-president of the United States with nationalist-Catholic ideology, adored by the far right on both sides of the Atlantic.
Kevin Roberts is above all one of the unofficial VRPs of a great design of Trump 2: weaving the canvas with the “Civilization allies in Europe”, As the United States Department of State in a strategic note published on May 27. We read the will of Trump's men to promote their conception of a “Common civilizational western heritage”, From Paris to Warsaw. At the end of May, therefore, Kevin Roberts was in France for the first time, for this purpose.
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Source: Lemonde