Once upon a time, Donald Trump became the GOP standard bearer by indicating he would be a different kind of Republican. He broke with the GOP’s obsession with shrinking government and cutting entitlements, rejected party orthodoxy on trade deals, and generally ran against and defeated the Republican establishment and their “donors and special interests” who, he said, hated him because he rejected their money, and whom he later blamed for sabotaging his presidency.
Yet ironically, the man Trump has tasked with running the essential machinery of his presidency — the man who, by his own admission, is the shadow architect of his entire second term — is the living embodiment of the Republican Party Trump once ran against.
That man is Russell Vought, the longtime radical anti-government ideologue who, as Trump’s recently confirmed director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is now poised to see through the cause of his life: dismantling as much of the federal government as possible and handing the rest over to big business.
The governmental bonfire that has been the first month of Trump’s second term has often been credited to billionaire Elon Musk. But in many ways, Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are simply the private consultants brought in to do the dirty work of downsizing that management has decided should be the priority of Trump’s presidency. Management, in this case, is Vought.
Vought’s agenda has little in common with the rhetoric that rocketed Trump to prominence and that animates the working-class voters he has pulled away from Democrats — about taking care of the “forgotten men and women” and saving put-upon workers from decades of Washington corruption. Instead, it’s firmly…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
