Well, he does.
Why bring it up now? Because he made headlines yesterday for telling reporters that the U.S. can “grow its way out of” a national debt that just crossed $40 trillion.
Everyone knows that’s not true. For a lifelong finance guy who both attended and taught at Yale, it’s a startling separation of what he knows from what he is willing to put forth on the record. Which is always worth at least one heebie-jeebie.
Btw, Bessent is also in the news for his unexpected Treasury policy pivot to ease bond interest rates. This quick fix may be primarily a sign of political panic ahead of midterms, but that does not rate a heebie-jeebie.
What about saying that Trump’s widespread ICE/deportation effort means that the economy can afford to create fewer jobs? Again, for sounding like a loon to support a program built on not economics but bigotry and cruelty? One heebie-jeebie.
Speaking of bigotry and cruelty, some folks love to pain Stephen Miller as a closet Nazi. I’m not saying there’s no grounds for that. But of the entire administration (POTUS included), whose everyday countenance and icy execution of party line make it the easiest to see him thriving in the bunker? I mean, that grey suit and generally haughty deadpan are just dying for an armpatch to round out the look. Easily 1.5 heebie-jeebies.
As late as 2013, Bessent was donating to Hillary Clinton. Then four years later, he gave to Trump’s inaugural campaign after Trump won the election. It would seem some sort of disassociation again took place here, seeing a path to power and jumping on it despite previously held values. That’s a big, fat heebie-jeebie.
One of those values, one can only presume, is marriage equality. Bessent is gay, and he is married. I get that nobody agrees with a particular party platform 100% all of the time. I appreciate the conflict that some people feel in these situations. But if you’re prioritizing what will guide your political leanings, and you decide that other policy positions are more important than your right to marry the person you love … I mean, what the actual fuck?
“Sorry, honey, you’re great — I’d be sad if we became second-class citizens and our love became illegal again. But I just can’t turn my back on my devotion to a combination of Reaganomics and needless tariff wars.”
Call that willingness what you want. I call it several heebie-jeebies. Someone who can do that can do anything.
Pick any infamous world leader. Their popularity may have often depended on generating fear and demonizing “the other” among us. But what was the fuel that made their policy visions actually happen on an administrative level?
It was the people who knew better in one or more ways but, for whatever their individual reasons, served the agenda anyway. From here, Bessent looks like the modern-day poster boy.