“But the men Vought was talking to actually worked for a British journalism nonprofit and were secretly recording him the entire time.” “For nearly two hours, he talked candidly about his behind-the-scenes work to prepare policy for #Trump, his expansive views on presidential power, his plans to restrict pornography and immigration, and his complaints that the GOP was too focused on “religious liberty” instead of “Christian nation-ism.” "Vought said his group, the Center for Renewing America, was secretly drafting hundreds of executive orders, regulations, and memos that would lay the groundwork for rapid action on #Trump’s plans if he wins, describing his work as creating “shadow” agencies. He claimed that Trump has “blessed” his organization and “he’s very supportive of what we do.” "Vought said he had personally talked to Trump in recent mos & received at least 1 personal “assignment” from him after he left office. He noted that TFG has “been at our org, he’s raised money for our organization, he’s blessed it … he’s very supportive of what we do.”
That wasn’t just bluster to try to land a big check, according to others in the MAGA movement. Trump and Vought have spoken at various times since leaving office, and the former president has adopted some of Vought’s ideas" "Micah Meadowcroft, the research director for CRA, said the drafts the group was preparing would be provided to an incoming Trump administration in a way that would protect them from ever being publicly disclosed.
“It’s a big, fat stack of papers that will be distributed during the transition period,” Meadowcroft said in the video – while noting that “you don’t actually, like, send them to their work emails,” in order to avoid disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act." "The work of drafting policies is happening months ahead of the election in part because “President Trump will want to spend literally zero amount of time thinking or contemplating what a transition will look like,” Vought said. “It’s not how he thinks.”
Vought’s guiding principle, he said, was simple: What would Donald do?" "“I want to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation,” Vought added later. “And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism. That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism because I also believe in nationalism.”
Vought argued that it was important to pursue some of the culturally conservative policy goals listed in the Project 2025 blueprint – including abortion restrictions and making pornography illegal – while taking into account political realities." "Instead of an unpopular new law banning all pornography, for example, Vought said that his group would propose “doing it from the back door” by making pornography websites legally liable if minors use them. That could lead pornography companies to stop doing business in states with those kind of laws, he suggested."
"“The President has, you know, the ability both along the border and elsewhere to maintain law and order with the military,” Vought said. “And that’s something that, you know, it’s going to be important for, for him to remember and his lawyers to affirm.”
Trump wanted to deploy thousands of active duty troops on the streets of major cities to quell protesters in 2020, but defense officials pushed back, a senior official told CNN at the time." Vought added that the unrest following Floyd’s death “obviously was not about race.”
“It was about destabilizing the Trump administration,” he claimed.
Russell Vought, a co-author of Project 2025, was caught on a secretly recorded video saying that Trump’s denials of any connection with the conservative policy blueprint were politics.
