As noted here on multiple occasions, Russell Vought is the 2nd most powerful authoritarian MAGA operative in America today. Only djt is more powerful. Vought is the head of the OMB, an obscure but extremely powerful government agency. To a large extent, he controls the flow of money and power in the federal government.
Vought is a deeply corrupt CN (Christian nationalist) theocrat. He is soft-spoken, insanely goal oriented, extremely intelligent and viciously ruthless. His overwhelming focus is on converting US government and society from what they are today into a cruel, deeply corrupt, and bigoted Old Testament-style Christian theocracy. He is focused on transitioning government to his vision of a bigoted, kleptocratic Christian theocracy after Trump dies or is out of power. That's what he quietly uses his vast power for.
Our failing MSM, in its usual clueless incompetence and/or subversion, doesn't report nearly as much about Vought as his power and ideology warrant. But today the NYT posted an article about him. Sadly as usual, the NYT frames its reporting in pro-Trump, pro-authoritarian terms. The article's framing is anti-democracy, anti rule of law and anti-civil liberties.
What the NYT is mildly alarmed about (
not paywalled) is the
possibility that Vought is getting close to making Trump a dictator shielded behind the legal euphemism called the "unitary executive". The NYT's milquetoast, pro-dictator framing posits the danger as "threatening to erode checks and balances". The reality and pro-democracy frame is that
checks and balances have been eroded. We are close to the dictator's and Christian theocrat's goal of a dictator in control of a theocracy, or if Trump passes from the scene, a theocrat controlling a dictatorship.
The NYT article make Vought's long-term goal crystal clear:
"We want to make sure that the bureaucracy can’t reconstitute itself later in future administrations".
The NYT reports that Vought was frustrated but patient with Musk and DOGE: "We’re going to let DOGE break things, and we’ll pick up the pieces later". Vought hates government and wants the independence of federal agencies completely obliterated, commenting calling "unelected"
bureaucrats: "a cartel working behind closed doors". That's unitary executive dogma speaking. The pieces picked up will be replaced with corrupt, unelected theocratic, pro-dictator MAGA loyalist bureaucrats. That's the plan.
A legal expert commented on what it means when the executive controls the money flow, which Vought has engineered with the consent of MAGA USSC shadow docket decisions: "One of the main sources of power that Congress has over the executive branch is the budget. If the executive branch isn’t controlled by the power of the purse, then there is very little that will control the President. It’s a fundamental challenge to liberty for every single person in America."
A fundamental challenge to liberty for every single person in America? Well duh! Good catch NYT. /s
Other terrifying comments and thoughts by Vought or spokesmen: "We have now been embarked on deconstructing this administrative state. Step after step, it’s to move quickly, trying to think through what the founders would have done in the circumstances, and be aggressive”. Regarding the Education Department (DoE), he claims it spreads “woke-rot” propaganda like “grooming minors for so-called gender transition.” Regarding the Federal Reserve, it “been wrong for decades". The State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) actively embarrasses the United States". And the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targets “struggling families in a craven effort to sustain the broader bureaucracy’s radical progressive agenda”. Vought also once commented that he wanted federal employees to be "in trauma".
That nicely sums up the cruelty, seething hate and deranged detachment from reality that MAGA elites like Vought claim to believe and the goals they strive for.
A morality analysis
The open question for people like Vought is how much of reality they see and hate is falsehood, i.e., grounded in true ignorance, and how much is lies and slanders, grounded in cynical mora rot. Do MAGA elites like Vought really and sincerely believe the untruths that the DoE grooms minors for sex-change, the USAID actively embarrasses the US, or the IRS really does struggling families in a craven effort to fund evil progressivism?
Sure, it is impossible to know for sure if they actually believe all of those obviously false things. So we are left to decide what to believe based only on the evidence in the public record. What evidence is in the public record? MAGA's public record is accurately and reasonably summarized like this:
MAGA rhetoric and tactics has a rock solid public record of (1) thousands of brazen lies or falsehoods, (2) thousands of outrageous slanders, (3) constant divisive, distracting, bad faith rhetoric dominated by intentional, irrational emotional manipulation (fear mongering, fomenting bigotry, etc.), and (4) usually logically flawed crackpot reasoning.
Translated into English: The empirical evidence overwhelmingly points to there being no reason to trust or believe that elite MAGA rhetoric or behavior is genuine and in good faith. Instead, there are compelling reasons to distrust almost everything that any MAGA elite says. In other words, why trust a damned thing any MAGA elite says unless you just happen to know it is true.
In view of the circumstances, the burden of proof of sincerity and trustworthiness is on MAGA elites, not the public. They need to prove their good will and good intentions. We do not need to prove anything.
Q: Does what MAGA elites say and do provide sufficient evidence to trust that their intentions are honest and pro-democracy, or is the evidence sufficient to believe that their intentions are dishonest (corrupt, bigoted, etc.) and pro-authoritarian, or is the evidence still ambiguous or something else?
