JD Vance Getting Debate Prep From Project 2025 Contributor

AP Photo/Matt York

CNN reported this week that former Fox News personality and Trump administration official Monica Crowley is helping Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) prepare for his vice presidential debate next week against Gov. Tim Walz (D).

Crowley is playing the moderator during the debate prep sessions, while House GOP Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), who is a longtime colleague of Walz’s, is playing the Democratic nominee for VP. News that Vance enlisted Crowley for debate prep raised eyebrows as she is a prominent contributor to the much-maligned Project 2025, which Donald Trump and his campaign are working overtime to distance themselves from.

Crowley is playing the role of CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell and Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan who will co-moderate the Oct. 1 debate. Sources told CNN that Crowley was chosen to make the prep feel “real and professional.”

“One of the benefits of doing hostile media nonstop is you become very well-versed in dealing with attacks on your record,” a source told CNN, adding, “We have a lot of confidence in JD speaking about policy. The goal is to focus on Walz and his weaknesses.”

Crowley’s name is listed in Project 2025 as a contributor, citing her role in helping to develop and write the 920-page policy agenda. Project 2025 is a sweeping list of goals and action items for reshaping the federal government that Trump has claimed he “knows nothing about” – despite in the past saying the creators of the document, the Heritage Foundation, were “going to lay the groundwork and detailed plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

That detailed plan is both a database of Trump loyalists and a plan to institute many of the hard right’s long-sought-after desires, including more limits on abortion, abolishing the Department of Education, ending workplace protections for LGBTQ people, limiting the U.S. role in NATO, and a dramatic build-up of nuclear weapons.

Kevin Roberts, who leads Project 2025, delayed the release of his book until after the election as it included a foreword written by Vance.

Crowley has also made headlines in recent months after she told the Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference over the summer that “Joe McCarthy was right” and that communists have indeed infiltrated the U.S. government.