Even the toughest budget advocates aren’t immune to a softer side.
On Tuesday, during a long Cabinet session, Russ Vought—now 49 and the director of the Office of Management and Budget—was caught sketching a landscape on his notepad. The picture of him in the background of a meeting is what let us see his artistic side, and the image was captured by AP photographer Julia Demale Nikhinson while she was taking photos of other officials.
In the drawing Vought sketched a handful of pine trees fronting gently rolling mountains, with a pair of fluffy cumulus clouds that reminded one of a classic Bob Ross episode. Below the trees he added a simple upward‑pointing arrow. No one yet knows whether the image or the arrow holds a special meaning—Vought is a polarizing figure among Democrats and liberals because of his record of cutting federal employees, ending the US Agency for International Development, and pulling funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, all under the umbrella of the Department of Government Efficiency.
The photo was taken just as President Trump shuffled around the table asking each of his cabinet members for progress reports. Trump had already been boosting Vought’s reputation as a “cutting machine.” On October 2, after a 43‑day government shutdown began, the president shared footage of another video in which the OMB chief appeared in a hood and wielded a scythe while the song “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult played.
No official from the OMB has yet responded to questions from this paper about whether Vought has a preferred artist or deeper artistic ambitions.
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