Russell Vought is the glue between Elon Musk and Republicans

Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images

His reputation for being “Trump’s holy warrior ” During the 45th president’s first period did not stop him. His intimate commitment to Project 2025 -Agenda of Trump’s second administration, which became so controversial that the Trump campaign everyone except rejected it did not stop him. His spokesman for Radical ideas of presidential power During his confirmation, hearings did not stop him. His suspected attachment to a wildly unpopular federal financing freezing imposed by the agency, he was nominated to run, did not stop him. And Senate Democrats that delayed mobilized one Boycott of the A -Committee’s vote supports him and then launched one All-Night “Talk-A-Thon” On the Senate floor to warn of his vicious design he couldn’t stop him. And then Thursday night, with a poll along party lines, Russell Vought was confirmed to return to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, as he has described as “Nerve Center” for the Federal Government.

With this vote, a very important piece of the Trump 2.0 machines was snapped in place. Other cabinet-rank-appointed are very flashers and get more attention. Their departments do things that everyone understands and that touch millions of lives directly. But far beyond his specific responsibilities (preparation of the president’s budget and review of fiscal and regulatory decisions), the new OMB Director is a particularly valuable player in the planned maga transformation of the federal government. To borrow a sports designation, vought is a “glue guy” or to use another sports metaphor, “straw that touches the drink.” He is the team member who lifts the performance of everyone around him without necessarily being the big star himself. And if you are alarmed by the counter -revolutionary ambitions of this administration, it should make him a very scary man for real.

In the shaking of the federal government, which Maga people generally call an attack on “Deep State”, there are three main forces. One is a Congress controlled by a Republican Party that has sworn an unusually intense fidelity to Trump and which has its own ideological reasons (mostly related to the need for reduction of deficit and debt) to take a sole to take The parts of the federal government that do not involve GOP -holy cows such as social security and defense. Another is DOGE, Elon Musk’s Pseudo-Agency, who already causes destruction in the agency after agency when using his radical business acquisition methods for the public sector with a giant social media troll on his back. Each is engaged in demolition work that can at least temporarily be stopped by federal court decisions (in Musk’s case) or by internal cranking (in congressional). Vought’s OMB is the third strength that will ensure that Trump’s agenda is moving forward one way or the other. And he is perfectly equipped to coordinate these different forces and supply blow to the bureaucracy if and when others fall short.

The financing freezer showed us what a single memo from OMB can do, sparring nationwide chaos and panic. A more sustained effort, and one that is less dependent on “pauses” and more on a real freezing of grants and contracts backed up by explicit president’s executive orders can do much more damage to the programs and services that Maga – People don’t like anyway. Meanwhile, OMB can exchange Intel with DOGE on potential targets in the bureaucracy, while OMB will certainly guide Congress Republicans as they put together massive budgetary and appropriation bills.

Vought’s personality, worldview and experience make him much more central than his job description, believe it or not. He is in synchronization with deep wells of the conservative infrastructure as a committed Christian nationalist (he is a candidate from Old-School Fundamentalist Wheaton College and is closely associated with the theocratic Neo-Calvinist wing of the Southern Baptist Convention), a thinking tanker (at the Heritage Foundation and his own Center for Renewing America), an heir to the budget-wing-linging Tea Party movement, and as a person who perfectly synthesizes the hard core right to both pre- Trump and Trump-Poker.

Equally important is Vought the other person than Trump himself, who may be able to keep his budgetary allied work together and not fight for power. He spent many years working on Capitol Hill and knows the house GOP culture especially well; He is a natural ally of the fiscal radicals of the House Freedom Caucus, who currently has a huge impact, perhaps even control, on 2025 budget decisions thanks to their willingness to blow things up if they do not get their way. But he is also as radical as musk in his antipathy to the deep state as the most important apostle of the idea the president should have great powers to USURP Conventional Discharge if he finds it necessary. And unlike Musk and his team of software engineers, he knows every hook and cranny from enemy territory from his former stint at OMB. Vought has too Forged personal links With the turbulent tech bro according to Wall Street Journal:

A senior official said Vought and Musk have been building a partnership since just after Trump’s victory in November.

“They share the same passion for making the federal government more efficient and eradicating waste, corruption and fraud, so I think they are very much in line,” said Wesley Denton, a long -time adviser to former Senator Jim Demint (R., Sc) and a vought -friend.

So Musk may get the headlines, and Mike Johnson and John Thune can flex their muscles at Capitol Hill when competing to make Trump’s lawless impulses for laws. But the hand on the wheel can really belong to Russ Vought, who is trusted in implicitly by a president who is not interested in the details of management and appreciates a loyal subordinate who turns off the limelight as much as his radical views allow. He is now in place and ready to travel holy hell. Lord God helps us all.