The Trump administration wants to finish draining the swamp.
But that plan is facing fierce resistance.
And a Trump official exposed one ugly truth about the deep state that left CNN stunned.
CNN tries to corner Vought over his previous comments
CNN’s Dana Bash thought she had Budget Director Russ Vought trapped during a Sunday morning interview on State of the Union.
She played a 2023 clip where Vought said the Trump administration wanted bureaucrats to "not want to go to work" because they would be "viewed as the villains" and that they wanted to "put them in trauma."
Bash clearly expected Vought to walk back his comments or apologize for his tough stance against the administrative state.
Instead, Vought doubled down and delivered a masterclass in how to handle hostile media.
"Look, I love how you cherry-pick the quote on trauma," Vought fired back at Bash. "What I was referring to there was the bureaucracy. We do believe there’s 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 then provided a concrete example that perfectly illustrated his point about government overreach.
He told viewers about Joe Robertson, a 77-year-old Navy veteran who was thrown in jail by the Environmental Protection Agency for building ponds on his own property to fight wildfires.
Vought refuses to apologize for targeting the weaponized bureaucracy
The Budget Director made it clear that the Trump administration wasn’t going to be intimidated by media criticism of their reform efforts.
"When you have the EPA put a 77-year-old Navy veteran named Joe Robertson in jail for doing wild — ponds to fight wildfires on his lawn, that’s not just the FBI, it’s the EPA," Vought explained. "And we do want to defund and put that — those bureaucracies out of business."
But Vought also showed he could distinguish between the bad actors and dedicated public servants.
"But I have great people at OMB. There are great people at the FAA. There are great people at the NIH who are doing hard work and important public service activities," Vought said.
He emphasized that his comments needed to be understood in their full context rather than the selective editing that CNN presented to viewers.
"And I think it’s important to provide the full context of what people like me have said in the past," Vought added.
The Budget Director then delivered the line that probably had establishment politicians and bureaucrats across Washington, D.C. reaching for their antacids.
"But this — we’re not going to be pushed — receive pushback from the notion that we’re going to dramatically change the deep, woke and weaponized administrative state," Vought declared.
Vought represents Trump’s commitment to government reform
Vought’s unflinching defense of the Trump administration’s reform agenda shows that this White House is serious about keeping its promises to the American people.
For too long, unelected bureaucrats have wielded enormous power over the lives of ordinary Americans while facing zero accountability from voters.
The case of Navy veteran Joe Robertson that Vought cited is a perfect example of how federal agencies have been weaponized against law-abiding citizens.
Robertson was a 77-year-old Navy veteran who lived in Montana’s fire-prone wilderness and operated a business supplying water trucks to firefighters.
In 2013 and 2014, he dug small ponds on his property near a narrow channel to store water for fire protection.
The EPA claimed this foot-wide, foot-deep channel was a "federally protected commercial waterway" under the Clean Water Act, even though Robertson’s property was more than 40 miles from the nearest navigable river.
Robertson was prosecuted and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison plus a $130,000 fine that was deducted from his Social Security checks.
He died in March 2019 at age 80, still fighting to clear his name through the Supreme Court.
Robertson’s story represents the experiences of countless Americans who have been harassed, fined, or even imprisoned by bureaucrats who think they know better than the people they’re supposed to serve.
Vought’s willingness to take on both the media and the administrative state signals that the Trump administration won’t be deterred by criticism from the swamp creatures who benefit from the current broken system.
The American people elected Donald Trump to drain the swamp and reform the federal government.
Russ Vought is proving that this administration intends to deliver on that promise, no matter how much the establishment media and entrenched bureaucrats complain about it.
Dana Bash and CNN learned the hard way that Vought won’t be intimidated into backing down from the mission the American people gave him.
