I really think if you go back... and look

at the major flashpoints of russ vote's career in politics and in government they are all bringing you to this inflection point where he says we're going to use this tool called empowerment we are going to put forward this argument that says the president can unilaterally thwart the will of congress because the president disagrees

In the midst of this, Vogt does

not do the obvious thing, seemingly, and distance himself from the president.

Nope.

Russell Vogt did the opposite.

He reaffirmed his loyalty to Trump and gets to work starting this think tank and grassroots operation to keep the MAGA torch aflame and start planning for

Yeah

... and DOGE.

You know, Elon blows into town at the beginning of the second Trump term, so January of 2025, and he has this gaggle of tech bros in there.

You know, they set up in this fancy building right next to the White House.

They're posing for pictures.

Elon has his DOGE hat and his feet up on the desk.

And DOGE- Causes a lot of confusion and chaos, and they run around breaking a lot of things really fast, but a lot of this stuff doesn't stick.

Hmm

Describe how he did there.

Heritage Action launched in 2010 in this very fraught moment in American politics.

The Affordable Care Act has recently been passed.

This Tea Party movement is brewing to push back on what conservatives see as this massive government overreach.

And Heritage Action becomes the brawling, spiky is a great way to put it, affiliate of the Heritage Foundation, this longstanding think tank really known for putting out policy papers, kind of a tweedy, ivory tower kind of culture.

And then it starts this pugilistic activist arm called Heritage Action, and Russ Vogt goes there and basically becomes the chief antagonist, the most persistent tormentor of all of these members of Congress that he used to work for or work in support of when he was on the Hill.

To take one example, in the 2010 elections, he designs this attack ad against a senior United States senator, Bob Corker of Tennessee, [chuckles] that puts Corker's face on a mailer next to three other people that a Republican doesn't want to be seen with: Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin-

But part of this is tactical on Vogt's part, right? He gets to do what he wants to do if he doesn't complain about what Trump wants to do.

These are powerful tools.

Yeah, that's right, and they are very much the tools that Vogt has been using to accomplish the very goal he talked about in that Tucker Carlson clip that you played earlier.

In June, the White House sent what's called a rescission request down Pennsylvania Avenue to Congress.

What that asked Congress to do, that request, was to rescind $9 billion that Congress had already appropriated by law.

It had passed a law that accounted for this money to go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to go to foreign aid programs, and now the White House said to Congress, "We want you to take a vote on rescinding that money, zeroing it out." The thing that is striking to me is that Vogt tried to do this in the first Trump administration when he had a similar role at the Office of Management and Budget, and, and ultimately, he, he was the director at the end of the first Trump administration.

They sent a massive rescissions request in the first Trump administration to Congress, and Congress said no.

Congress narrowly defeated this measure, and it was seen back then as the legislative branch exerting its will, kind of standing up for itself and saying, "We write the laws.

Is chaos a goal of Russell Vought's?

How, w- what is the relationship between that Christian nationalism, and he's an avowed Christian nationalist, uh, that Christian nationalism and the idea that we should strip the government of virtually all of its functions?

It's probably the first thing I would have asked him, if he would have said yes to any of the, like, five interview requests (laughs) that I put in over the course of months, most of this year so far.

How do you square your religious worldview, the teachings that come with that, with this desire to slash programs that, in a lot of cases, you can measure, people have measured, less funding means greater harms? In some cases, less funding means people will die at a higher rate.

Um, I think reading into what he believes, what he says, what he's written, which I did a lot of in this piece, the piece draws on, you know, dozens of hours of previously unpublished, you know, new speeches that he'd given, briefings that he had led, a lot of behind the scenes stuff that no one has heard or seen before.

And the way he seems to frame it, is that, you know, the government in his view has gotten to this post-Constitutional, corrupted, rotten place.

It has completely gone off the rails from what the founders intended, and that if people like him don't go in and take these drastic measures, firing, uh, tens of thou- if not hundreds of thousands of federal workers, freezing government programs unilaterally, slashing funding that, in some cases could lead to greater fatalities, that America as a country will collapse.

You know, he said going into the 2024 election, we quoted him as saying this, that, you know, that election, uh, 2024 shouldn't be thought of as, like, on a scale of 1980 or some more contemporary contest.

... ideologue to sort of, like, then get on some type of sinecure.

Describe how he did there.

Heritage Action launched in 2010 in this very fraught moment in American politics.

The Affordable Care Act has recently been passed.

This Tea Party movement is brewing to push back on what conservatives see as this massive government overreach.

And Heritage Action becomes the brawling, spiky is a great way to put it, affiliate of the Heritage Foundation.

And Russ Voight goes there and basically becomes the chief antagonist, the most persistent tormentor of all of these members of Congress that he used to work for or work in support of when he was on the Hill.

To take one example, in the 2010 elections, he designs this attack ad against a senior United States Senator, Bob Corker of Tennessee, that puts Corker's face on a mailer next to three other people that a Republican doesn't want to be seen with, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin-

But part of this is tactical on Vogt's part, right? He gets to do what he wants to do if he doesn't complain about what Trump wants to do.

Why Republicans as well as Democrats fear him.

It's great to be back, Amy.

Thanks for having me.

I would argue that Russ Vought is arguably the most important aide, advisor to President Donald Trump in the administration right now.

I know viewers and listeners know names like Stephen Miller.

They think of Miller perhaps as maybe the- the number two to- to President Trump.

But right now, in the middle of this shutdown, the 21st day, Russ Vought is as influential as anyone in this administration has been.

Uh, h- what do you see as unique or different about the way that, uh, Vought is operating?

So I guess the question is, we know what he wants, we know they've worked hard over the last four years to try and get as much of this agenda through as they can, how much of this can they do? How far can they go?

(smacks lips) I mean, based on the nine months we've seen (laughs) so far, I think, uh, a lot farther than what someone like a Steve Vladeck at Georgetown Law that I spoke to for this story might have expected, and there are a few reasons for that.

I mean, the first reason is that Congress, in particular the Republican majority, has put up nary a whimper, any kind of defense to the extremely aggressive posture that the Trump White House and, in particular, OMB Director Vogt, have taken.

Russ Vogt has essentially said to Congress, "We are going to short circuit the entire appropriations process, the power of the purse, Congress' number one job priority, by freezing billions of dollars, by rescinding billions of dollars, by essentially jamming up the whole government funding process." That is not how (laughs) Schoolhouse Rock taught us the Constitution and the federal government is supposed to work, and yet that is what Russ Vogt has done, and Congress has not really put up much of a fight.

And then, if you look at the way this administration has been succeeding in court so far, in the lower courts, mixed record, at the Supreme Court, much more success so far.

And so I think there is, um, a level of surprise even among legal scholars who thought that, you know, Russ Vogt would have a better chance of succeeding given all the preparation, a little bit of surprise at how aggressive the administration has been, how little opposition from within the Republican Party there has been, and how successful they've been at the courts, and again, we're just nine months into this administration.

So, how thought out is all of this? I mean, how, how specific, uh, and, uh, and, and detailed and, um, uh, and really thought through, uh, are all these layoffs? Th- that, that, that surprised me, that it seemed kind of slipshod.

Yeah, it surprised me a little bit as well.

It's a- it's mind-boggling.

The real main conspiracy theory thread as it relates to Seth Rich is that Seth was this whistleblower insider who was working at the DNC and was supposedly exposing some kind of corruption there, uh, of the Clinton family.

Obviously Hillary Clinton was the Democratic nominee in 2016, and that Seth Rich was somehow trying to expose this nefarious information and was killed by the Clinton cabal.... for trying to surface whatever it was he was going to- to surface.

And there are, as you might imagine, riffs and variations, different flavors of this theory.

There are some that say it was, uh, a Russian hit team that had taken- taken out, scare quotes, Seth Rich.

There are some flavors that it was, uh, the deep state, the FBI, the CIA that, you know, saw him as some kind of insider threat and were ordered to take him out.

Uh, there is also a- a vein that it was the gang MS-13.

What is their sense of, kind of how this took root and, and wouldn't let go, and still to this day hasn't let go?

Is there any way to know that, you know, what you're watching is, you know, brought to you by Leonard Leo? Or is, is part of the strategy to sort of just, you know, blend into the wallpaper?

That's definitely his modus operandi.

I think these movies, these television projects, the other things that he's working on, uh, very much the goal is to try to, say, fund filmmakers or fund studios.

It's not gonna be Leonard Leo Productions brings you the animated version of Doctor Dolittle.

That's just not plausible, credible.

There's no way that would work.

But if you say it's through the Motion Picture Institute or if you're funding a studio that has a whole bunch of different projects, then I think you can accomplish both things.

But, uh, hey, I'm- I'm ready, willing, and able, uh, to be of service in any way I can.