Russ Vought Is Going to Damage Trump Even More Than Elon Musk Did

Trump and Vought have clearly come to two conclusions. The first is that they have the upper hand in negotiations to reopen the government. As federal workers sit at home or work without pay and government services further deteriorate, the Democrats will be forced to cave—accepting a deal to fund the government that doesn’t extend the enhanced Obamacare subsidies. The second is that it’s a win-win. They want to gut the government anyway; if the shutdown drags on for weeks or even months, so be it. But the administration is already overplaying its hand, and moreover it’s repeating mistakes that it made just a few months ago when it gave free rein to a different nihilist—Elon Musk—to take a hammer to the government.

Trump lives in a bubble where everything he does is rapturously received and any criticism or pushback is inherently illegitimate. So the president and his White House minions probably don’t believe—or don’t care—that the public blames the GOP more than Democrats for the shutdown. A second-term administration has that luxury, but other Republicans are not so fortunate. There are suggestions that Republicans in the Senate—where the shutdown is currently stuck—are particularly frustrated.

The administration was roundly criticized Tuesday for an OMB draft memo arguing that, contra a law passed after the 2019 shutdown, federal workers are not guaranteed back pay. Susan Collins, a moderate who has been instrumental in negotiations to reopen the government, said that Congress had “settled” the issue when it passed a law guaranteeing back pay in 2019; John Thune, the chamber’s Republican leader, pretty much concurred. Thom Tillis, another key Republican vote, was blunt: “I’m not an attorney,” he said, “but I think it’s pretty bad strategy to even say that sort of stuff.” Later on Tuesday, as is his wont, Trump hung his Senate peers out to dry by precisely saying that sort of stuff. “I would say it depends on who we’re talking about,” Trump said when asked about back pay for furloughed workers. “For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people. There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”