Rightwing strategy chief in US 'boasted of killing dog'

The man behind Project 2025, the rightwing manifesto that includes calls for a sharp increase in immigrant deportations if Donald Trump is elected president in November, told university colleagues about two decades ago that he had killed a neighbourhood dog with a shovel because it was barking and disturbing his family, according to former colleagues who spoke to the Guardian.

- Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Reyes Mata

Kevin Roberts, now the president of the Heritage Foundation, is alleged to have told colleagues and dinner guests that he killed a neighbour's pit bull around 2004 while he was working as a still relatively unknown history professor at New Mexico State University.

"My recollection of his account was that he was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbour's dog had been barking pretty relentlessly and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem," said Kenneth Hammond, who was the chair of the university's history department at the time.

Two other people - a professor and her spouse recalled hearing a similar account directly from Roberts during a dinner at his home. Three other professors also said they heard the account at that time from the colleagues who said they had heard it directly from Roberts.

None recalled Roberts who worked at the university as an assistant professor from 2003 to 2005 - ever saying that the dog he allegedly said he had killed was actively threatening him or his family.