Check out the end of the video clip where Bessent demolishes the hapless Mike Barnicle.
Barnicle tries to play the class-envy card, saying he figures Bessent did “very well” in the stock market yesterday because it spiked up on news the shutdown could be ending.
Bessent explains to Barnicle that he doesn’t own any stocks: had to sell them all to become Treasury Secretary.
It got so bad Barnicle had to thank Bessent for “straightening me out!”
Ping to Liberal Media Criticism list.
Bessent has been burning his way through all the liberal talk shows. He burned Stephanopoulos and another MSNBC host over the past couple of days too.
So you don't believe that all the people who went to vote last Tuesday on the issue of affordability, my rent's too high, I can't afford to buy a house, groceries are too expensive. You think they're just misperceiving what's happening in their lives? I think that they, that they're, that we inherited an affordability crisis. We have slowed the price increases down and they are going to continue to slow down and that real working class wages will go up and that that will address the affordability issue.
And, you know, I think this is what Democrats are afraid to do, that they've gone to the courts to try to stop President Trump and this great economy. That hasn't worked. They get overruled at SCOTUS.
We go to the media who carries their water. That hasn't worked. So they shut down the government and hurt the economy.
Let's keep the economy open, let our policies kick in and let's see if what I just talked about, let's see if those two lines cross. Costs come down, real wages go up, and then we can have an election next November. You can blame the media.
I understand that's part of your job. Unbelievably, Bloomberg had an article yesterday that said, oh, mortgages, mortgage rates aren't down that much. Well, on Inauguration Day, a 30-year mortgage was 7.8 percent, yesterday it was 6.22 percent.
That is the single biggest component of buying a new home. And that is a gigantic drop. But it said, oh, they're just down slightly.
How much of an issue, the president was asked last night about affordability and he suggested we didn't have an affordability crisis. I'm certainly not asking you to cross the president here, but I am curious, over the next six months to a year, how much of a challenge will affordability remain for people that want to heat their homes, want to buy a home, want to be able to pay their rent, want to be able to buy a new car? Well, Joe, there's a lot there to unpack. A lot of the home heating costs are actually driven by states.
I found it very interesting the other day when the governor-elect of New Jersey said the first thing she's going to do is bring down energy costs. Well, Phil Murphy did a terrible job and energy costs are high because of the choices he made over the past few years. Same for New York State.
New York State refuses to put in these natural gas pipelines. There's an abundance of energy next door in Pennsylvania. You could bring down New York State energy costs just by putting in these pipelines.
So part of it's a choice. But when you ask over the next six or 12 months, there are two parts to affordability. There's the price level, and we inherited a mess.
It was the worst inflation 40 or 50 years. And I think what the president was very frustrated about is, you said everyone started talking about it, that after he took office, where was the discussion during Joe Biden? Because during the Biden era, it was complete gaslighting. There was a vibe session.
Steve Ratner, who you just had on, wrote a column basically saying, like, Americans don't know how good they had it. You just don't understand. But the American people know what they're feeling.
As I said before, with the affordability, there are two components. There's price, and then there's real wage gains. And Americans are going to look back and think that under President Trump's first term, they saw very substantial wage gains, especially for working Americans and the average household.
So I think they're going to look back to that. And again, Steve Ratner's charts very conveniently got truncated in 2020 on that. How does a $20 billion bailout of Argentina help Americans? You're the president's point person on that.
Can you explain to those here who are feeling the pinch, including America's farmers, why the United States is helping out Argentina? Well, do you know what a swap line is? It's currency swap. Yes. Yes.
But what is that? You're the Treasury Secretary. Yes. But why would you call it a bailout? That is how... In most bailouts, you don't make money.
The U.S. government made money. We used our financial balance sheet to stabilize the government. The U.S. government, one of our great allies in Latin America, during an election, the president there won in a landslide.
The government's going to make money. Yeah. Hey, Mr. Secretary, I'm just curious, just to clarify, have we made our money back already from the Argentina bailout or the swap line or whatever you call it? Have we made that money back now? Or are you saying we're going to make that money back from them over time? What's the payout for that? We already have a profit on that swap line.
So have we given them... Did we transfer $20 billion and we've already gotten back? Absolutely not. We made a line of credit available and a small amount of it was drawn on and we have made a profit on that. On that so far.
Okay. Very good. Hey, Mike Barnicle, next question.
Yeah. And Mr. Secretary, I hope this question doesn't piss you off. I don't know.
It's four on one. But it seems about right. Well, okay.
Yesterday, the stock market took a pretty good jump on news that the shutdown might come to an end. A lot of people did very well on the stock market, I assume, and I assume that you probably were one of them and good for you. That would be an incorrect assumption because I had to sell all my stocks to become Treasury Secretary.
You sold them all? Had to. Yes. But you have a blind trust, I would imagine.
There's no such thing as a blind trust. Okay. Thanks.
Thanks for straightening me out on that. But anyway.
Mike Barnicle? Is that the same Barnicle who got caught in a Plagiarism scandal years ago?. I always thought plagiarism was the ultimate sin in journalism.
“This time, Bessent fended off four members of the Morning Joe crew nipping at his heels. Joe Scarborough, Willie Geist, Jonathan Lemire, and Mike Barnicle”
I didn’t see this clip, but I don’t have any doubt that Bessent put them down easily. The guy is brilliant. The Scarborough crew, put together, are not in his league.
Why are Trump officials going on MSNBC? It gives them undue credibility!
Mike Barnicle? That plagiarist is still alive? Who knew?
They seek to humiliate him.
He makes excellent points, and ends up humiliating them.
They pay no attention to anything he says, they learn nothing, they just think to themselves, “We’ll get him next time!!!”
It’s nothing like journalism.
My best friend and I are Scott Bessent fan girls. 😊