A former senior Trump administration official who played a key role in crafting the far-right Project 2025 agenda said in closed-door speeches Monday that he wants to traumatize career officials and lay the groundwork for Republican nominee Donald Trump to seize total power. , unfettered control of the federal government if he were to win the Nov. 5 election.

In collaboration with the watchdog organization Documented, ProPublica on Monday published several videos of two private speeches that Russell Vought — who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term — gave in 2023 and 2024.

During the previously unreported speeches, ProPublica and documented Vought observed “detailed plans to deploy the military in response to domestic unrest” and “dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency.”

“Together, Vought’s two speeches provide an unvarnished look at the inspiring ideology and political worldview of a key figure in the MAGA movement,” the new report said. “Following Trump’s rhetoric, Vought implicitly endorsed the false claim of a stolen 2020 election and compared the media’s debunkings of that claim to Chinese communist propaganda.”

Vought also laid out in disturbing terms his intention to leave federal employees “traumatically affected” as part of a sweeping effort to purge the government of scientists and other officials seen as disloyal to Trump.

“When they wake up in the morning, we don’t want them to want to go to work because they’re increasingly seen as the villains,” Vought said in an excerpt obtained by ProPublica and documented. “We want their funding cut off so that the EPA can’t implement all the regulations against our energy industry because they don’t have the financial bandwidth to do that.”

Although Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, claiming he knows nothing about it and has “no idea who’s behind it,” at least 140 members of his first administration — including Vought — were involved in putting together the sprawling extreme right agenda. , which outlines plans to relax climate regulations, further reduce access to abortion, eliminate summer food assistance programs for children and cut taxes for the wealthy.

Vought, head of the Center for Renewing America think tank, has rejected Trump’s attempt to dismiss Project 2025, telling an undercover journalist earlier this year that the Republican candidate is “very supportive of what we’re doing.”

In the 2024 speech obtained by ProPublica and documented, Vought said he and other Project 2025 leaders have put together “detailed agency plans” and are “writing the actual executive orders” for Trump to sign if he defeats Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election.

“We’re writing the actual regulations now,” Vought said, “and we’re figuring out the legal authorities for everything President Trump is doing.”

Specifically, ProPublica and Documented reported that Vought “explained how his think tank comes up with the legal rationale for invoking the Insurrection Act, a law that gives the president broad power to use the military for domestic law enforcement.”

Vought lamented that Trump was persuaded to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell mass racial justice demonstrations sparked by the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. ProPublica and documented that his preparations for a possible second Trump administration included the creation of a “shadow office” of Legal Counsel, the body that advises presidents on their powers.

Fight, thus ProPublica and Documented, “made it clear that he wants the office to help Trump dissipate the kind of internal opposition he faced in his first term.”

Jesse Eisinger, editor-in-chief at ProPublicadescribed Vought’s assessment of the current state of the US as “apocalyptic stuff,” noting his view that the country is “in the late stages of a full-blown Marxist takeover… in which our adversaries already have the weapons of government in their hands.” device, and they pointed it at us.”

Vought — who has previously said he hopes to “rehabilitate Christian nationalism” — called Trump a savior of sorts in one of the recently unveiled speeches, calling him “a man so uniquely positioned to fill this role.”

“He’s seen what it’s done to him, and he’s seen what they’re trying to do to the country,” Vought added. “That is nothing more than a gift from God.”