Why Russell Vought Is Worse Than Watergate
“We want bureaucrats to be traumatized. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work… We want to traumatize them.”
—Russell Vought, May 2023
“[The Center for Renewing America is] an organization that I helped turn into the Death Star…. I want to be the person who crushes the deep state.
—Russell Vought, July 2024
“We are in the final stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country. »
—Russell Vought, July 2024
“In his first term, the president wanted to cut off funding to Ukraine… It’s a completely normal political process to go through and one that people have lost their minds over… I’ve been personally told, you know, I want the money cut off until we know where it’s going.
“And we cut off the money. And it was like all hell broke loose within the bureaucracy.”
—Russell Vought, interview with Tucker Carlson, describing his role in provoking the first of Donald Trump’s first-term impeachments, November 2024
“The Consumer Financial Protection Act requires the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for transferring each quarter an “amount determined by the Director to be reasonably necessary” for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to exercise its powers under the law….
“This letter is to inform you that for the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, the Bureau is requesting $0.”
—Russell Vought (in his capacity as Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), February 2025
“I am a Christian and I believe in a set of Christian principles based on my faith.”
—Russell Vought, June 2017
Russell Vought, director of President Donald Trump’s White House Office of Management and Budget, is Charles Colson 2.0.
Colson was the most fiercely partisan member of President Richard Nixon’s White House staff. He describe se as Nixon’s “axeman” and hung a sign in his house that read, “When you get them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” » Colson also reportedly said he would run over his own grandmother to elect Richard Nixon (although this turned out to be a slight embellishment on what someone else said about Colson). Inevitably, Colson was the first Nixon aide to go to prison for his role in the Watergate scandal (for obstruction of justice).
Colson’s fall prompted him to a religious awakening. After getting out of prison, he declared himself born again and started the nonprofit. Prison scholarship ministry, which is still in operation thirteen years after Colson’s death. Although somewhat conservative, Prison Fellowship has a reputation for doing good in the world, promoting rehabilitation, less harsh sentences for drug offenders, and more.
In Colson’s day, conservatives thought you could be a henchman Or you could commit yourself wholeheartedly to Jesus Christ, but you couldn’t do both at the same time. How picturesque! The current generation of conservatives rejects this false choice, none as vehemently as Vought.
My goal in beginning this article with a long series of quotes was to demonstrate that Vought presents himself as both an amoral political actor and a devout Christian. Vought wishes trauma to the officials and has inflicted the same thing; boasts of having transformed his think tank into a “Death Star” ; leans to the right paranoid tendency by asserting that Marxists rule America; helps Trump illegally withhold aid to Ukraine after its leader refuses to investigate the son of Trump’s 2020 opponent; And seizes Congressional appropriations in gleeful defiance of legal precedent. It’s more of a sin, isn’t it? Not at Vought. While doing all of this, Vought proudly declares his deep devotion to the Christian faith.
