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
They just assume the gravy train is going to keep on going. I dealt with the most within the military, right? But like – What's that like?
Well, I want to understand these things. I want to understand these systems and these institutions, why people say what they do. And there's just – there's no – understanding. There's no fiscal conscience at all with regard to the individuals. It's like, nope, we've got to perform a particular function in the world. I read that somewhere in my educational system. I now believe it.
It doesn't matter whether that was never voted on. It doesn't matter if that's kind of anathema to where our founding fathers would have envisioned. And so we are going to maintain our presence everywhere in the country. I,
the military get to define my requirements about what's necessary to win that military objective you civilian don't get to ever question my requirements those requirements now automatically cost x amount of money and we wonder why we can't ever have exactly any cuts to defense and we wonder why then defense spending becomes the praetorian guard for the non-defense spending Right.
So for, for what we have been unwilling to cut any non-defense spending, the bureaucracy, which is the quote discretionary spending members have a vote on it every single year. They don't have a vote on entitlements. Those are on autopilot. They have a vote on the bureaucracy. So everything they hate about government, their members are voting on.
We haven't been able to have cuts to non-defense, not because Republicans are unwilling, although many of them are unwilling as well, but because there has been a view that those two things have to be constantly considered together. And the Democrats insist and Republican hawks insist that defense has to be growing at X percent to deal with the threats in the world.
And that requires you to then bring additional non-defense spending to be able to be for that political coalition. And ultimately, if you get your average Republican member, they ultimately care a lot more about the defense stuff than they do about the bureaucracy.
Ultimately, you have your average Republican member cares more about the military industrial complex than they do about the woke and weaponized bureaucracy that is oppressing.
Well, I think it goes to the unhealthiness of the Republican coalition for like 50 years, but particularly in since 1989. Tell me what that means. So your kind of National Review Coalition, your fusionist Republican coalition was anti-communist. Yes. It was social conservatives, traditional conservatives. Yes. And it was kind of fiscal libertarians, right? That was your coalition. Absolutely.
And it worked until, you know, a certain level when we had the Soviet Union. But when we don't have the Soviet Union, it kind of takes on a life of its own, and now you have to keep us everywhere in the world to be able to justify all of the institutional buildup and the complex that has been built up, all of these defense industrial companies and things like that.
And Pat Buchanan actually talks about this in his book where he says, look, this was a specific strategy hatched out of the Department of Defense by some of the neocons at the time to be able to continue to justify the largest, from a defense standpoint, that we continue to be tied down to. That, I also think, you know, is...
And you don't actually then think through, okay, what does that mean? Does that mean I have to then be for every war that's been hatched? Right. Do I not to be for making— a defense that we can actually afford? Does that mean that I think that from an economic standpoint that we're not actually citizens before we're consumers? Like there's just a lot of unhealth in all of those. Yes.
Why are Christian conservatives naturally defense hawks? That's what I'm saying. Not just defense hawks, war hawks. What happened in that?
Well, I do believe this is why we we we need to be less doctrinaire on the right. Gosh. And to think actually think, you know, and read those books you were mentioning earlier. Read and to be thinking through and ask the questions and trying to learn more and realize like, you know, a history book may have been written at a time to just to to with a particular political benefit and meaning to it.
And so maybe we don't take everything. Right. You know, I don't know. Maybe some skills we learned in school. Right. And just common sense, intuition. This is something that I think is something seems off. It's off.
And you see it in some of the attacks on RFK. They say, well, this hasn't been proven. There are gaps in our understanding, our scientific understanding. That's like their bureaucratic way of saying – Yeah, your intuition's right.
I think it is. I think that the systems do it. People get into these and that's where they kind of get to the paradigm level. I'm not going to do anything that would hurt national security. I came to D.C., I'm not going to do anything that hurts the national security. I think that's how we lose people when they go into the skiffs, just to go back to our earlier conversation.
And you've got to have courage to say, look, what happens if your time in office, you missed a big issue? Like, Maha is a new issue to me. I admit it. I'm trying to read. I'm trying to read the Means book. I listened to your podcast. You know, it's a new issue. But, like, if I didn't get my head wrapped around it—
Future generations will have to indict me for me being irresponsible on an existential issue facing our country. So I don't think most people think like that. But in general, I think our Republican coalition is unhealthy and has been for a long time because we have, and if we are, the country will be too secular, too imperialistic and global, and too economic. Right.
And I come out of the free market economist lane, right? That's where I got my start. But we're not consumers. Like, the notion that the end of all economic good is consumption, and so consumers get to veto on everything, it's not actually what a citizen in a country and a nation are.
Showing 361–380 of 409 · page 19 of 21
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