Russ Vought
speaker
409 appearances
6 recordings
5 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 18 Apr
Russ Vought’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
That's not the Department of Justice. That's the EPA. You go to every agency, and it's not just big government. It's weaponized against the country. Of course. And so, yeah, we – I would want to provide trauma against that bureaucracy in a way that frees the American people from the people that have assumed – The type of power that the Constitution and no law, no public debate ever gave them.
Does that mean we dislike everyone working at federal agencies and want them to have a bad life? No, of course. There's a lot of people there who have come to serve and do great public service. And we want to affirm that. And we want to turn over the bureaucracies that are traumatizing the American people. Yeah.
They're going to be exhilarating if you have the right approach to them. But they're going to come at everything we've got, right? Or everything they've got with what they are able to put someone in the dock and And that individual is going to have to face the balance of wanting to defend everything that they have done in life and belief.
And at the same time, the thing that's a little hard about it is you're no longer yourself, right? You are yourself, but you are also going to do a job for a person. So what I think about a particular issue doesn't mean as much as what the president thinks about something like that.
And so it is a different thing than coming on and doing an interview about what your viewpoints on a particular issue are.
Right.
So but I think, look, I have I've had experience, you know, Bernie Sanders went after me very, very hard in my first confirmation hearing as deputy OMB for essentially believing in John 316. And. Wait, he hit you, he attacked you on the basis of your religious beliefs?
He said I was a bigot and I should not serve in the federal government because of my Christian faith and believing something that essentially comes down to what's articulated at sports games with John 3.16. And that was most clues. Who's the bigot? Who is the bigger, right? That's the perfect question that goes back.
Most nominees will not go through what I went through, but I will tell them you will get through it.
you will get to the other side and it will be the most freeing thing in the world you will come at through the end of a process like that and you will i find it to be at that point exhilarating because it prepares you to take on an enemy fire where are they going to what are you afraid i've been calling you bigot racist christian nationalist authoritarian if you if you are if you are not afraid of these attacks and you give them no credence no credibility
then you will be able to get through these things, you will be able to convince enough senators, and you'll be able to serve, and you'll be served more effectively. But the bright lights will be on in these confirmation hearings.
I don't think most votes change at all. I think that, you know, you may have one or two anomaly senators that are trying to, you know, have you answered something to their satisfaction or they're trying to get a feel for you that they haven't otherwise. But I think increasingly in the partisan world that we live in, the Democrats are voting no.
And it's a matter of making sure you've convinced and you've brought in the- So you get no, I mean, what's interesting- I got no Democrat votes.
You never see that on the other side. And they have an appreciation that they have to attack our people at every level. because they know that every level is a stepping stone for- The next level. Exactly, right? So they don't make it saying, oh, this is just like the undersecretary. Yeah, exactly. No, we're opposed to that.
Well, certainly the first term, right? I become deputy and next thing you know, Mick goes to the chief of staff. And so I have an opportunity to serve as director. And so that is, they understand government and they understand the career path that is opening for people.
And they, when they sense, and it's not always the case, but when they sense that this is a committed conservative, it's a partisan line down the road.
I have high hopes that people are seeing what Trump just accomplished and are going to be pulling the oars to get things done as soon as possible. And I think the jury is out, right? I think I want to see and I'm hoping to see people looking for ways to move these appointees through the process. And sounds like they're trying to do that. We'll see. But
You know, we we have to do things not based on how it has been done recently, like this whole notion of the recess appointments. Right. You have some people out there who are saying this is unconstitutional. It's not the way it was meant to be. It's totally wrong. Right.
It it is a specific provision in the Constitution to be able to allow a president if he does, if he has to stand up an administration quickly and he's dealing with a Senate that won't move quickly enough to. to be able to install his people so that he can actually function as a government, right? That it's specifically mapped out, and yet you have— So in the Constitution. In the Constitution.
So it's by definition not a constitutional fair. Fair. So yet you have Republicans, one of them in particular, like Ed Whelan right now, who's attacking Trump for even mentioning— Who's Ed Whelan? Uh, he, he writes one, he's one of the main kind of, uh, legal luminaries on the right and, and, uh, uh, ethics and public policy are one of those think tanks.
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