Bulwark Takes - Scott Bessent Is a Pathetic and Incompetent MORON
Episode Date: April 27, 2025Scott Bessent embarrassed himself on national TV, clueless about China negotiations and fumbling through obvious lies. Total disaster. ...
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Hey everybody, it's Tim Moore from the Bulwark.
Treasury Secretary Scott Besant humiliated himself again on the Sunday shows,
this time on This Week on ABC with Martha Raddatz.
She was asking him about the status of these deals, these trade negotiations where people are banging down our door, apparently, and the phone's ringing off the hook on all these trade negotiations while our economy suffers.
And his answers ranged from unsatisfactory to lying to just utterly, utterly mortifying and disgraceful.
I mean, how could you just wake up in the morning, you know, in your Barbie house in Charleston and decide you want to go onto TV and try to spin this nonsense for Donald Trump?
Anyway, I want to watch the first clip about the most important thing,
the China negotiation. And I'll explain to you what the many, many problems are with it
on the other side. Are negotiations actually happening? Who is talking?
This was IMF World Bank Week, the NDC, as you know, and I had interaction with my Chinese counterparts, but it was more
on the traditional things like financial stability, global economic early warnings.
I don't know if President Trump has spoken with President Xi. I know they have a very good
relationship and a lot of respect for each other. But again, I think that the Chinese will see that this high tariff
level is unsustainable for their business model. Why would they deny that the negotiations are
going on? Well, I think they're playing to a different audience. The Treasury Secretary
doesn't know if Donald Trump has talked to Chairman Xi. He doesn't know the status of
the negotiation. Why are you on TV then? I mean, it'd be one thing to
lie and to say, well, you know, those are private conversations. I'm not going to comment on them.
That's not what he said. He said, I don't know if they've talked. What are you doing here if you
don't know? I mean, like this is the most important, if you're the treasury secretary,
the trade war with China is your number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 priority right now. Okay. The trade war with China is like a, at the heart of Trump's agenda,
positive agenda. If you want to try to spin, spin it that way economically,
it is also at the center of the economic challenges that we have in front of us.
It could be the thing that leads us into a recession.
Like, you know, the negotiation with what's happening with Italy,
if we want to pull them out of the EU and do a buy lap,
like that's not that big of a deal.
Okay.
You know, the Italian marble importers in the country,
like they'd appreciate that.
But like systemically, what's happening with China is the game.
We have 145% tariff on them.
I've mentioned this a couple of times, but I talked to a woman just a couple of days ago who owns a small business here in New Orleans who was like, I'm screwed.
Like so much of the products that we sell to tourists here come from China.
There is not an alternative in the US.
145% tariff is totally unsustainable.
We can't make money. We're going to lose money on everything we sell. And we've talked about the
board game company. There are just so many examples of this across the board. Like an 145%
tariff on China's crisis. There's stories out this morning about the ports, like the port of Seattle, port of Los Angeles, like how much less traffic there is going into the ports already.
Like the final Chinese ship is going to be going into West Coast ports in like a week or by Chinese ship.
I mean, like a ship carrying Chinese goods.
So I'll like the impact of all of that, like the impact is the big box store CEO said to Trump of empty shelves.
Like all that is coming.
This is an urgent problem.
Okay.
It's bad enough.
The economy is bad enough right now.
The market situation is bad enough. But like a real crisis that people will be able to experience in their lives, be they small business owners or people that shop at Home Depot, that like almost every American is going to interact with.
Like this crisis is coming right now.
The Treasury Secretary should be fully engaged on what is happening with his counterparties in China, what is
happening with the president, how we're going to get to some kind of deal or temporary,
like some, you know, reprieve.
No, that wouldn't be that good.
I mean, this is an utter crisis, and he's just sitting there all haughtily talking about oh oh well you know i saw my
counterparty at the club you know after i had a cosmopolitan and you know we had a little chat
there and you know we'll see we'll see like what we're just wait. I don't know what Trump is saying. I don't know. I don't know what the status is. Get to work, Scott Besant.
Anyway, he did some lying too. We might as well watch that.
Let's talk about the Time interview with President Trump. He said that he has made 200 deals on tariffs.
200 deals?
Who has he made deals with?
Is there actually any deal at this point?
I believe that he is referring to sub-deals within the negotiations we're doing.
And, Martha, if there are 180...
But those aren't actual deals.
Martha, if there are 180 countries, there are 18 important trading partners.
Let's put China to the side because that's a special negotiation.
There are 17 important trading partners, and we have a process in place over the next 90 days to negotiate with them.
Some of those are moving along very well especially the with the asian
countries so yeah we got these sub there's sub deals okay we don't have any deals we got sub
deals i don't know subway sub um or subordinate deals i guess i don't know we've we have some
we've had some chats you know like no like you have nothing there's nothing a sub d there's no there's nothing
like you've made no like maybe you've made progress you know what i mean it's kind of like
i don't know if you were trying to um hire somebody for a job and you know they'd submit
their resume and they said that though they want X amount of dollars a year.
You're like, ooh, that's too rich for our blood.
And then you talked about it.
You're like, well, we could maybe do it with a bonus.
And they're like, oh, I don't know.
And then you're like, well, we have a sub deal.
And it's like, well, no.
No, you don't, actually.
You have nothing.
You've discussed some potential pathways to a deal a deal but you don't you haven't
actually done anything and i i i i i i i genuinely don't understand why he's doing this
like i i like people on the internet they're saying like oh this is for a an audience of one, Trump. Could Trump possibly be impressed by the most haughty and affected billionaire going on TV to make very condescending remarks about demanding that people be patient and like not giving really particularly
compelling answers and having a horrible q score i i it's just to me it's just so i don't know it's
it's pathetic i just i can't imagine that trump watches that and it's like that's good tv
so i don't know another argument is that and is like, that's good TV. So I don't know.
Another argument is that he's doing it for the markets.
But again, if you're the market, if I'm an investor, how do I look at that?
Investments basically saying we're not going to have any deal for months with China.
I don't think that should be calming to the markets, calming to the business community.
So I don't know what he's doing.
Maybe this is a kink.
I don't know.
Maybe Trump's making him do it.
Maybe that's a kink.
I'm just open to different ideas because I don't see anything positive coming out of Scott Besson's appearance on the Sunday shows this weekend. I see
somebody that basically reveals that they're out of loop on the most important negotiation that
they should be the central player in. And I see somebody like just making up some really,
really obvious lies that anybody could see through to try to buy time and rationalize a policy that
is undefend it is indefensible you know it's just like the idea of tariffs are not indefensible the
idea of some kind of nationalist you know economic policy that that tries to reshore jobs is not
undefensible like there there are ways to all of this that I probably wouldn't support,
but that,
you know,
you could at least have a policy argument around.
There's no policy argument for having a 145% tariff on China,
shutting down the ports and like randomly changing the number every day.
Like there's nothing.
So why defend it?
I guess.
Why defend it on ABC this week?
Who is that for? Maybe one day we'll learn anyway we'll be seeing you all again real soon peace