# Russell Vought — "put them in trauma" > [!quote] "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down… We want to put them in trauma." > — Russell Vought, private speech, 2023 (recordings obtained by Documented, reported by ProPublica, 2024) ## Context Said in a series of private 2023–2024 speeches by Vought — Project 2025 architect, head of the [[Center for Renewing America]], and twice Trump's OMB director — secretly recorded and later published by Documented and ProPublica. The remarks describe the intended psychological effect of the administrative-state demolition agenda on career civil servants. ## Why this matters The candid statement of intent behind [[Schedule F]] and the broader [[Project 2025]] plan to gut the federal workforce: the goal is articulated not as efficiency or reform but as deliberate demoralization — making civil servants "the villains" and traumatizing them out of their jobs. It is the receipt that reframes "deconstruction of the administrative state" from a dry governance debate into an explicitly punitive program against the people who staff the government. ## Verification - **Source:** [ProPublica — "Put Them in Trauma"](https://www.propublica.org/article/video-donald-trump-russ-vought-center-renewing-america-maga); [Government Executive](https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/10/inside-key-maga-leaders-plans-new-trump-agenda/400607/). Recordings obtained by Documented. - **Status:** Verbatim from recorded speech. Private-communication (the speeches were not intended for public release); disclosed via leak. Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Grover Norquist - drown it in the bathtub]] — the older shrink-the-state doctrine that Vought's program operationalizes from the inside. - Featured in [[Project 2025 and the Administrative State]] — the administrative-state-demolition pattern collection. - Featured in [[Might Makes Right Doctrine]] — the might-makes-right power-doctrine collection.