A long time ago (on Tuesday) in a galaxy far, far away (but actually Washington), President Donald Trump unveiled a new Star Wars-themed nickname for the White House budget chief he has empowered to punish Democratic lawmakers by cutting projects and programs he perceives as their priorities.
Speaking in the recently paved White House Rose Garden at a lunch for Republican senators, Trump was roughly 35 minutes into his 42-minute stem-winding speech, rattling off a litany of complaints about the three-week-old government shutdown — and blaming Democrats for the “pain” caused by the “reckless and completely unnecessary affair” — when he spotted a figure in the crowd seated in front of him.
“I will say this — that we have Darth Vader. You know Darth Vader, right?” Trump rhetorically asked. “Darth Vader is a man who, I think, is sitting right — is that Darth? Stand up, please.”
The person he was speaking of was not the intergalactic villain played by David Prowse and famously voiced by James Earl Jones in director George Lucas’ iconic trilogy, but was in fact Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Vought, a longtime Republican activist who was a major contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for centralizing power in the White House and marginalizing Democrats, has been using the ongoing lapse in government funding to take a meat axe to a broad swath of programs benefiting states that have elected Democratic governors or senators — or voted against Trump in last year’s election.
Trump then claimed that “they” — meaning Democrats — have nicknamed Vought after Jedi Anakin Skywalker’s Sith Lord alter ego, and said he calls Vought “a good man” himself. In fact, it was the president who coined the science fiction-infused moniker for his budget chief.
“He's cutting Democrat priorities, and they're never going to get them back,” Trump said. “They've caused this, and they've really allowed us to do it.”
The president added that Vought was “doing a really great job” because major Democratic projects such as the $20bn Gateway Tunnel project in New York were being cut.
“They're losing all the things that they wanted, but there many of the things that they wanted are things that we don't want, the things that are just so bad for our country, and we're cutting those things out,” he said.
Trump’s comparison of the OMB director to the Star Wars villain was just one of several bizarre digressions made in the course of his 40-plus minute speech to every Republican senator save for Rand Paul of Kentucky, the libertarian former ophthalmologist who frequently opposes the president’s attempts to expand executive authority and employ the military domestically and overseas.
“We're just missing one person. You'll never guess who that is,” he said, adding that the missing senator — whose name he did not mention — “automatically votes ‘no’ on everything” and conceding that he’d have “begrudgingly” allowed Paul to attend had he asked.
In another bizarre aside, he noted that the Rose Garden is located on the opposite side of a wall shared with the White House press briefing room — formerly a swimming pool built during the Franklin Roosevelt administration — and suggested that the Secret Service kept then-first lady Jackie Kennedy from entering when her husband, then-president John F. Kennedy, was carrying on with other women inside.
“On the other side of the wall, that was the swimming pool where Jackie would say, ‘I hear women inside. Women inside.’ Quite famous. I’m not saying anything. That was part of a movie and the Secret Service said, ‘No, ma’m.. There’s no women inside,’” Trump said.
At another point, he complained that the electoral trends running against an incumbent president’s party in midterm congressional elections defy explanation, and said not even Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been capable of explaining why a president’s party almost always loses control of one or both chambers two years after the last presidential election.
“We've had success like nobody, but for some reason, you lose the midterms. I don't know why. I mean, the odds are tremendously against like 92% or something. It doesn't make sense. If you have a great presidency, it only makes sense that you win the midterms. So there should be no reason for it,” he said.
Trump, who has demanded that GOP-controlled legislatures redraw House districts to prevent Democrats from winning control of the House next year, warned that his party must “win the midterms” or “all of the things that we’ve done” since he returned to the White House will be “taken away by the radical left lunatics.”
The president’s remarks came just one day after construction crews began demolishing the facade of the East Wing in preparation for constructing the massive $250bn ballroom he has championed as his signature addition to the White House grounds.
Trump said his lunch guests could “probably hear the beautiful sound of construction” behind them and said it was “music to [his] ears.”
The former real estate developer said construction noise normally “reminds me of money” but claimed that this particular project “reminds of lack of money” because he is supposedly paying for the ballroom himself — with the aid of multiple corporate and Republican donors.
“It's going to be one of the most beautiful ballrooms anywhere in the world,” he said.
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