A key ally to former President Donald Trump detailed plans to deploy the military in response to domestic unrest,
defund the Environmental Protection Agency
and put career civil servants “in trauma”
in a series of previously unreported speeches that provide a sweeping vision for a second Trump term.
In private speeches delivered in 2023 and 2024, #Russell #Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, described his work crafting legal justifications so that military leaders or government lawyers would not stop Trump’s executive actions.
He said the plans are a response to a “Marxist takeover” of the country; likened the moment to 1776 and 1860, when the country was at war or on the brink of it;
and said the timing of Trump’s candidacy was a “gift of God.”
Vought does not hide his agenda or shy away from using extreme rhetoric in public.
But the apocalyptic tone and hard-line policy prescriptions in the two private speeches go further than his earlier pronouncements.
As OMB director, Vought sought to use Trump’s 2020 “#ScheduleF” executive order to strip away job protections for nonpartisan government workers.
But he has never spoken in such pointed terms about demoralizing federal workers to the point that they don’t want to do their jobs.
He has spoken in broad terms about undercutting independent agencies but never spelled out sweeping plans to defund the EPA and other federal agencies.
Vought’s plans track closely with Trump’s campaign rhetoric about using the military against domestic protesters
or what Trump has called the “enemy within.”
Trump’s desire to use the military on U.S. soil recently prompted his longest-serving chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. #John #Kelly, to speak out,
saying Trump “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”
Other policies mentioned by Vought dovetail with Trump’s plans,
such as embracing a wartime footing on the southern border
and rolling back transgender rights.
Agenda 47, the campaign’s policy blueprint, calls for revoking President Joe Biden’s order expanding gender-affirming care for transgender people;
Vought uses even more extreme language, decrying the “transgender sewage that’s being pumped into our schools and institutions”
and referring to gender-affirming care as “chemical castration.”
Since leaving government, Vought has reportedly remained a close ally of the former president.
Speaking in July to undercover journalists posing as relatives of a potential donor, Vought said Trump had “blessed” the Center for Renewing America and was “very supportive of what we do,” CNN reported.
https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga
