President Donald Trump’s budget chief got cornered for saying government workers deserve to be “in trauma.”
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought had said in remarks obtained by ProPublica. “When they wake up in the morning. We want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
“We want to put them in trauma,” Vought added.
CNN host Dana Bash took Vought to task for the remarks in an interview Sunday.
“Is that your goal as OMB director?” she asked.
Budget Director Russell Vought was taken to task for saying federal workers ought to be
Vought attempted to backpedal, accusing Bash of having “jerry-picked” his quotes.
“What I was referring to there was the bureaucracy,” he said. “We do believe there is weaponized bureaucracy. We do believe that there are people who have been part of administrations that are fundamentally woke and weaponized against the American people.”
Vought’s interview comes as Elon Musk has stepped back from his work at the Department of Government Efficiency, which has taken a scythe to the federal workforce. / Kevin Dietsch/Getty
Vought went on to further qualify his comments by insisting he believes there are “great people” in his department as well as at the Federal Aviation Authority and the National Institutes of Health, who he says “are doing hard work and important public service activities.”
Having chastised Bash for not providing “the full context” of his comments, Vought continued to rail against the “Deep State.”
“We’re not going to be pushed, receive push-back from the notion that we’re going to dramatically change the deep woke and weaponized administrative state,” Vought said.
His interview with CNN comes as Elon Musk steps back from his role as head of DOGE, which is estimated to have cut up to two million jobs from the federal workforce over the past several months.
As OMB director, Vought has been critical in implementing that initiative’s goals, and is even rumored to be tipped to replace Musk as its chief.
He was also one of the authors of the Heritage Foundation’s notorious Project 2025 report, which offered a blueprint for Trump’s second term that included, among other things, slashing the federal government back to the bone.
