“I have facts. They have opinions.”
Here's how Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent answered me when I asked him why he seemed to find it so easy to refute the arguments of establishment media reporters. I shared with him my theory that he was able to comfortably embarrass anti-Trump journalists because he had honed his skills debating Yale students when he was a professor. He did not reject my proposal (he had only kind words for his students), but instead offered the above answer.
He has facts and they have opinions.
If you put it that way, it's pretty simple.
WATCH the full interview:
And during the first year of the Trump administration, Bessent, the MAGAnomics avatar, certainly had the facts. He stood up to seemingly everyone in the elite consensus (except President Trump himself and the authors Breitbart Business Digest) and said that not only could we win trade wars with zero new inflation, but countries would be begging us for new deals.
My colleague John Carney and I heard his thoughts on this and more than a dozen other topics in a 45-minute interview in the historic Treasury Room, adjacent to the White House.
full interview is today's episode from The Alex Marlowe Show podcast with additional exclusive commentary in today's episode. Breitbart Business Digest.
The conversation began with a brief glimpse into Bessent's past, where his anti-establishment mindset allowed him to conquer Wall Street (he's worth more than half a billion dollars). “I made money by betting against the elite consensus,” he said.
He told us that he specifically built his investing career on people who not only disagree, but are willing to change their minds. This was quite refreshing in an increasingly tribal political moment.
“Politics is about personnel. And when I saw what President Trump was doing, one of my biggest days in one trade game was winning in 2016,” he said.
He make clear that Donald Trump was going to become president twice.
“I thought I was qualified to be President Trump’s Treasury secretary,” he told us, “or just to be a member of his administration.”
“So I came to him,” he continued, “almost three years ago, and I said, ‘Sir, I think you’re going to win. I think it will be transformational and I would like to be part of the economics team.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (left) talks with Breitbart's Alex Marlow (center) and John Carney in Washington, DC, November 21, 2025. (Matthew Purdy/Breitbart News)
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is interviewed by Breitbart's Alex Marlow and John Carney on November 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Matthew Purdy/Breitbart News)
But Bessent became a MAGA many years ago.
He said he attended a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 election because he “wanted to go and sit in the room and listen to what they had to say. And I walked out of that meeting and said they were going to lose.”
“It was the best research money I've ever spent,” he added.
Hillary Clinton wasn't the only person he shaded during the event. I asked him to contrast himself with Jeffrey Epstein associate and arch-democratic establishment figure Larry Summers, to which Bessent replied: “Yes.“You always have to look and understand what Larry's motives are and who is paying him,” noting that Summers was “infatuated with one of the biggest Chinese propagandists in the world.”
Summers was president of Harvard, secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton, and director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama. He also looked for seduction advice from Epstein after a convicted sex offender was arrested for child sex trafficking.
Larry Summers, President Emeritus and Professor of Harvard University, speaks at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 21, 2025. (Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In the second half of the interview we focused on policy and strategy. Bessent detailed how the Trump administration is applying maximum pressure to win trade negotiations and how rival countries regularly thank them for the terms of the new agreement. Naturally, he praised President Trump's deal-making acumen.
The conversation then turned to the topic of inflation, where the Treasury Secretary focused on the “three I's that are gutting working Americans”: immigration, interest rates and inflation. He shared that he believes inflation will drop significantly in 2026 and hinted at an upcoming study from the Council of Economic Advisers that shows inflation in red states is 50 or 60 basis points lower than in blue states.
An in-depth discussion of rare earths ensued, during which Bessent described the administration's goal of “reducing risks” from China rather than “decoupling.” He highlighted the fact that rare earth magnets are being produced in the United States for the first time in 25 years and that this new industry is likely to create thousands of new jobs.
But this is not the only industry where China's control over our supply chain is causing concern.
“We have problems with pharmaceuticals. We have problems with semiconductors, steel, shipbuilding. These are strategic issues,” he said. “We don't need to decouple from China. We just need to reduce the risks. And no one wanted to reduce the risks because it's difficult. It's not easy, but President Trump told the pharmaceutical companies, you're moving production here.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, the Secretary of State describes how the national security aspects of his job are among the most time-consuming. He also offered advice to Zoran Mamdani (even though “he knows everything”) and explained why the Trump administration sees deregulation as the centerpiece of its economic agenda.
The interview ended on a positive note, with kind words from the Treasury Secretary: “Congratulations. You both got A's on your early analysis.»
The full interview is now available on The Alex Marlowe Show eat YouTube, Apple, boltAnd Spotify.
Find more clips and analysis on the website Breitbart.com and in Breitbart Business Digest.
