Even by the standards of the fawning saps who make up the court of King Donald, secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent is particularly loyal. And a tour of the broadcasting studios last Sunday morning defending his boss’s absurdly-titled “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” was a classic of the genre.
First he told CNN how “this Democratic Party blew out the deficit in 2020,” which would have been quite a feat. By 2020, the party had been out of office for more than three years. The incumbent in the White House at that time? Donald Trump.
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Pressed on Trump’s failure to score the “90 deals in 90 days” that he promised back in April after imposing swingeing tariffs on nations across the globe, Bessent said that “again, he didn’t promise this… many of these countries never even contacted us”.
That would come as news to Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s White House press secretary, who told Fox News back on April 13 how “the rest of the world is calling our administration, the phones are ringing off the hook because they need the United States of America, not just our economy and our market but they need us to continue providing peace around this world”. This of course flatly contradicts Bessent. It also turned out that the “peace” Leavitt mentioned would involve dropping 13-ton bunker buster bombs and firing Tomahawk missiles at Iran.
Finally, justifying Trump’s stewardship of the economy, one looking increasingly likely to push the states towards Liz Truss-style disaster, Bessent claimed: “The president is probably the most economically sophisticated president we’ve had in a hundred years, maybe ever.” Bessent is heavily tipped to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. He’s doing himself no harm with such weapons-grade toadying.
