It didn’t seem like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would be one of the worst of President Donald Trump’s second-term cabinet picks. I mean, we’re talking about an administration including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, for crying out loud. But somehow, whenever Bessent opens his mouth, something jaw-droppingly stupid comes out.
On Wednesday, Bessent told a Breitbart News forum that the Trump Accounts—which are used to bribe people to have children by giving them a whopping $1,000—could be “a back door for privatizing Social Security.”
You can just hear some poor White House flack mumbling “ixnay on ivatizepray” while watching this, trying to figure out how to square Bessent giving the game away, considering that Trump’s campaign promise was to “always protect Social Security.” Maybe the question should have been “protect whose Social Security?”
It isn’t clear how that $1,000—which, mind you, is only available until January 2029—will somehow replace Social Security. And Bessent doesn’t seem to know either. He’s busy gushing about how these accounts would lead to “hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement.”
Sure, sure, sure. There’s the miracle of compound interest and, hey, Bessent is a money guy, right? He’s worth about $600 million, so surely he knows what he’s talking about. So if a baby gets $1,000 from Trump and you estimate a standard rate of return of 8%, by the time your kid turns 18, they will have … $4,000.
But the real boon here is for parents who have money, as they can stash $5,000 every year in these accounts, meaning that the 18-year-old now has approximately $190,000. But not all parents can do this, so those “hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement” seem pretty illusory for most folks.
Besides letting slip that the real goal is to privatize Social Security—a thing Republicans have learned never to admit out loud—Bessent also offered a vague explanation of how the Trump Accounts will improve financial literacy among young people, engage young voters, and make everyone “a shareholder”—and then they will not want to vote for Zohran Mamdani.
Well, they’re babies, Scott. They can’t vote for anyone.
Bessent isn’t just weak on Social Security and keeping his mouth shut about privatizing it. He’s also not super clear about the details of Trump’s tariffs. To be fair, Trump isn’t either. But a big part of the problem here seems to be that Bessent regards Trump as an economic genius, which, buddy, come on.
Jeff Bezos’ rapidly disintegrating Washington Post gave Bessent the space on Tuesday to write a lengthy op-ed fawning over Trump’s crypto moves. It’s bursting at the seams with buzzwords like “onshore innovation” and attacks against President Joe Biden for having the gall to believe that the government should regulate crypto.
“The president’s future-focused approach to blockchain technology stands in stark contrast to the hostility of his predecessor. The Biden administration leveraged the power of federal banking regulators to restrict banks from engaging in crypto- and blockchain-related activity, suffocating the digital asset industry,” he wrote.
Related | Trump’s unlawful crypto grift is going to crash the housing market
Yes, under Trump, we get a collapse of regulation of the crypto industry where his family is currently making bank. While that deregulation might be great for people like Trump, who use crypto for crime and bribes, it isn’t so terrific for regular people who don’t want to lose all of their money to a pump-and-dump scheme.
But Bessent is going to ensure we all have the opportunity to have our Social Security wiped out and to be buried in tariffs, and at least we’ll have the opportunity to be scammed by the crypto bros who know their future is secure if they give Trump enough money—no matter what crimes they get up to.
Thank God we’ll all be free of the tyranny of regulation so those dudes can finally flourish.