A new profile on Project 2025 mastermind Russell Vought reveals he was a ‘nerdy” boy frequently targeted by bullies.
The article in The Atlantic digs deep into the formation of Vought’s ideas. Now Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Vought was the co-author of Project 2025.
The document is considered to be blueprint for Trump’s second-term agenda and outlines a sweeping conservative overhaul of government, including gutting worker protections, privatizing Medicare and abolishing the Department of Education.
The project was crafted with input from over 110 conservative groups and at least 140 former Trump administration officials. Democrats consider it a "right-wing plot to undermine democracy."
But McKay Coppins' investigation exposes Vought as a quiet and shy young student who was bullied at an extremely conservative school.
“Vought’s radicalization was not a foregone conclusion,” she wrote.
“He grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut, with a devout family who sent him to a private Christian school and Bible camp in the summers. At Wheaton College, the evangelical university where he studied history and political science, Vought was bookish and a bit ‘nerdy,’ according to one fellow graduate who knew him at the time.”
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The former fellow student asked for anonymity before revealing, “Vought was a target of periodic pranks on their floor in Traber Hall.
“On one occasion, some of Vought’s dorm mates took a putrid-smelling bin that had been collecting dirty dishes in the common bathroom and hid it under his bed.”
Coppins wrote that he left school and became a quietly understated but central part of Trump’s reign.
“Vought remains among the most powerful figures in today’s Washington,” she wrote.
“As a co-author of Project 2025, and later a chair of the Republican National Convention’s platform committee, he drew up detailed plans to “tame the bureaucracy” once Trump returned to power. Now, as head of an agency that touches every aspect of the $6.8 trillion federal budget, Vought is in position to enact his vision. And he’s wasted little time.”