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Ep. 36
The Grim Reaper of the American Government (Part 1)
Who is Russ Vought? He’s been called the “shadow president” and the “Grim Reaper” of the U.S. government, yet he looks more like a CPA than a revolutionary. In Part 1 of this episode, Joshua and Will trace the origin story of the man who wants bureaucrats to wake up “traumatically affected.”
We explore how Vought’s ideology was forged by his father’s obsessive “gospel of scarcity” and his time at the “evangelical Harvard.” Learn how his disillusionment with GOP “heretics” transformed him from a “true believer” staffer into a political “enforcer” at Heritage Action. Finally, we detail his role as Trump’s OMB director, where he used obscure bureaucratic tools to illegally freeze Ukraine aid, triggering a constitutional crisis and setting the stage for his current, most ambitious project.