Coral Davenport

how his parents worked incredibly hard to support him and his siblings.

I think he really genuinely sees the burden of paying for taxes and government as weighing so heavily on families like his own.

Yeah, and you really see that through line.

You know, as soon as he graduated college, he went straight to Washington and got a job working for Senator Phil Graham, a Texas Republican who was at the time known as this icon of fiscal conservatism, fiscal austerity.

And I talked to Phil Graham about Russ Vogt, and he said something interesting.

He said, usually, you know, people come to work for me because they really want to come and work for me.

You know, that they're really sort of driven by this idea of slashing government.

And I asked him, you know, what he remembered about Russ Vogt.

And he said he remembered him as almost working too hard.

You know, working by day to support the agenda of cutting government and then going to law school at night.

Passion plus discipline.

Absolutely.

So after Phil Graham, he goes to work for the House Republicans.

He focuses on budget policy.

This is kind of during the time of the rise of the Tea Party.

So there's this wave of intense fiscal conservatism, anti-government sweeping through Washington, and he's a natural fit with all of that.

And then he goes from there to the Trump administration.

But I should say, it wasn't necessarily an automatic fit for him.

You know, one way that Russ Vogt is very different from President Trump is he's very religious.

He takes his faith really seriously.