Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank published a babbling op-ed smearing Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought.
It’s worth noting that Milbank is the same individual who disturbingly said he’d eat his own print newspaper column if then-candidate Donald Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination.
Milbank’s op-ed was erroneously headlined “Meet the Trump saboteur in charge of undermining Biden — and America.” He spewed that “[W]hat Russ Vought is very good at is sabotage. He’s sabotaging national security, the pandemic response and the economic recovery — all to make things more difficult for the incoming Biden administration.” He continued his rant: “That he’s also sabotaging the country seems not to matter to Vought, who has spent nearly two decades as a right-wing bomb thrower.” This is the latest exhibit of the kind of meaningless propaganda the newspaper has chosen to run in its four-year crusade against President Donald Trump’s administration.
Milbank said that a “hefty share of the blame” could be placed on Vought for everything from “pandemic vaccines” not being “available as promised” to Americans not able to “return to work because economic relief isn’t delivered.” Two points of order for Milbank: First, the liberal media — including Milbank’s own newspaper — had largely lambasted President Donald Trump’s correct prediction that a vaccine would be made available by around 2020’s end; Second, Americans can’t return to work because many liberal states are still prohibiting them from doing so with their draconian lockdowns, not because of a lack of “economic relief.”
This was apparently lost on Milbank, as he launched his screed against Vought.
One of Milbank’s craziest assertions was that Vought had “blocked civil servants at OMB from cooperating with the Biden transition.” He used a letter Vought had written “accusing the Biden transition of making ‘false statements’ about OMB’s uncooperativeness” to prove that Vought was “essentially confirming that it would not cooperate.” Milbank based his assessment on a cherry-picked quote from Vought’s letter that the OMB will not use “current OMB staff to write the [Biden transition’s] legislative policy proposals to dismantle this Administration’s work.”
This is just dishonest. Missing from Milbank’s piece was Vought’s stipulation that “On November 23, 2020, the same day that the General Service Administration (GSA) provided ascertainment, OMB moved swiftly to apportion $9.9 million for transition activities.”
Milbank proceeded to fire other arbitrary attacks at Vought on issues having nothing to do with the columnist’s thesis. Part of Vought’s “sabotage” of the Biden team and America, according to Milbank, included his conservative positions against — wait for it — abortion and critical race theory:
“[Vought] was the author of a Sept. 4 memo attacking critical race theory and canceling racial sensitivity programs, which he called ‘divisive, anti-American propaganda.’ … He has continued to lob grenades from inside the White House. At an antiabortion rally, he claimed credit for blocking Planned Parenthood’s funding.” Vought called critical race theory “divisive, anti-American propaganda” because he was accurately describing it.
Conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin summarized Milbank’s attacks on Vought perfectly on Twitter:
Dana Milbank is a truly pathetic hack and a vicious leftist. He’s so bad he gives yellow journalism a bad name. In other words, he’s a typical Washington Post employee.
In a follow-up tweet, Levin stated, “He wrote another smear job the other day against a good man, solid conservative, and public servant, Russ Vought. Milbank will never be half the man Vought is.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact The Washington Post at 202-334-6000 and demand they stop promoting propaganda attacks against conservatives.
