'Really Quite An Oddball': Sheldon Whitehouse Dunks On Trump's OMB Director Russell Vought

During a town hall on Monday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) spoke about Trump's OMB Director, Russell Vought.

Transcript

00:00And they have got some very creepy people behind this mischief.

00:05The guy who is sort of stage managing this from the Office of Management and Budget

00:11is a guy named Russell Vogt, who is really quite an oddball

00:18and very disdainful of all government.

00:22And he's been on the right-wing billionaires' payroll essentially his entire life

00:29coming up with the craziest ideas for turning the world into the one that right-wing billionaires want.

00:35He's the guy running OMB.

00:38You want to know who his counsel is over at OMB?

00:41He's a character named Mark Paoletta.

00:45If you remember seeing the painting of Leonard Leo, the court fixer, with Clarence Thomas,

00:54and the billionaire Harlan Crowe who's been funding Clarence Thomas' lifestyle,

01:00his mother's house, dependents' education, his family's exotic trips,

01:06the other person in that painting with the billionaire, the justice, and the court backer is Mark Paoletta.

01:13So you've got some really, really sneaky, dangerous people behind these decisions.

01:22And that is why provoking an interruption of benefits at Social Security

01:27so they can bring in the private equity people.

01:32And the tech grows to say, we can run it better.

01:34There will be no interruption of benefits if we do it.

01:36One thing on Medicaid, if you look at the map of the counties in the country that are most dependent on federal benefits,

01:44and you lay that over the map of the Republican voting counties,

01:48this is not going to be, even with Russell Vote and Donald Trump and all the billionaires,

01:54this is not going to be an easy vote for Republicans to have to take home to their districts

01:59when their own districts are disproportionately dependent on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.