Who is Trump’s treasury secretary pick, Scott Bessent?
Vincent Alban/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has helped fundraise for Donald Trump, is the president-elect’s choice to lead the Department of Treasury.
Bessent has advised Trump on economic policy and has been a frequent presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club over the last two weeks.
The announcement for the job, which needs Senate approval, was supposed to come earlier but had been stalled due to intense infighting among Trump’s top advisers — including transition co-chair Howard Lutnick — about who should get the job.
“Scott is widely respected as one of the World’s foremost International Investors and Geopolitical and Economic Strategists. Scott’s story is that of the American Dream,” Trump said in his announcement statement.
Bessent, 62, has been involved in financial firms for over 35 years.
Born and raised in Conway, South Carolina, Bessent graduated from Yale University in 1984.
After graduating from Yale in 1984, Bessent went to work for different investment companies.
He worked for Democratic megadonor George Soros from 1991 to 2000, where he was a managing partner. Later, he returned to Soros Fund Management (SFM) – the private investment firm that manages assets for the Open Society Foundations – as chief investment officer from 2011 to 2015.
Bessent has also been associated with Brown Brothers Harriman, The Olayan Group, Kynikos Associates and Protégé Partners.
Economists from both sides of the aisle believe Bessent is a middle-of-the-road pick.
Bessent made large donations supporting Trump and served as an economic adviser. He has also made several television appearances on behalf of the president-elect.
Bessent spoke at a conference run by the Manhattan Institute in June, where he laid out a three-point economic plan that he intended to propose to Trump.
“Well, I might even advise him to campaign on three arrows,” Bessent said. “It would be 3% real economic growth, and how do you get that? Through deregulation, more U.S. energy production, slaying inflation and forward guidance on competence for people to make investments — so that the private sector can take over from this bloated government spending.”
Bessent, who is gay, resides in New York City with his partner and two children.
As the highly anticipated treasury pick lingered, Elon Musk threw his support behind Howard Lutnick over Scott Bessent.
“Would be interesting to hear more people weigh in on this for @realDonaldTrump to consider feedback. My view [for what it’s worth] is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change,” Musk wrote on X. “Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another.”
(TEMPE, Ariz.) — The campaign office shared by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and the Democratic Party in Tempe, Arizona, was damaged by gunfire for the third time in less than a month on Sunday, police told ABC News on Wednesday.
The Tempe Police Department provided new details in its investigation, including a picture of the suspect’s vehicle it says is possibly a 2008-2013 silver Toyota Highlander, and announced that Silent Witness was offering up to a $1,000 reward “for any information that leads to the arrest or indictment of the suspect(s) involved in this crime.”
The shooting occurred between midnight and 1 a.m., around the same time the previous two incidents occurred, police said. No one was injured in any of the three shootings.
Harris is scheduled to travel to Arizona on Thursday for a rally and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was in the state on Wednesday.
After the second shooting on Sept. 23, police said they were taking “additional measures… to ensure the safety of staff and others in the area.” A motive for the shooting has not been determined as the investigation continues, according to police.
The office was shot at on Sept. 16 in an incident police said appeared to involve a BB or pellet gun. Police said that shooting caused “criminal damage.”
Law enforcement around the country is under heightened alert over an increase in political violence threats.
(NEW YORK) — New York state Sen. James Skoufis announced his long-shot bid for chairman of the Democratic National Committee on X on Saturday.
Skoufis, who paints himself as an outsider, underdog and part of a new generation, said he intends to point to his successful record in his district that favors President-elect Donald Trump.
Arguing for a new script, Skoufis said, “Voters have spoken, and we need to listen, not lecture. We need to be strong fighters again.”
“I may be an outsider, but I know how to win,” he continued. “I will throw out the DNC’s stale, Beltway-centered playbook so that we rebuild, stop ceding ground to Republicans and start winning again — everywhere. Not just the party, but the country depends on it. We can win this fight together.”
Skoufis, who has served in the New York legislature since 2013, joins the field with Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who has served as commissioner of the Social Security Administration since December 2023, and Ken Martin, a vice chairman of the DNC who also leads the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Jaime Harrison, the current chairman, is not seeking a second term.
The election of a new DNC chair will take place at the party’s winter meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, on Feb. 1, 2025. Harrison announced earlier this week that there will be four forums for candidates to make their cases to DNC members, who will also select a vice chair, treasurer, secretary and national finance chair, after the party lost the presidency and couldn’t obtain a majority in either the Senate or the House in the 2024 elections.
“As my time as Chair comes to a close and we prepare to undertake the critical work of holding the Trump Administration and Republican Party accountable for their extremism and false promises, we are beginning to lay out the process for upcoming DNC officer elections in the New Year,” Harrison said in a statement. “The DNC is committed to running a transparent, equitable, and impartial election for the next generation of leadership to guide the party forward.”
The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet on Dec. 12 to determine the Rules of Procedure for the contest, including what will be necessary to gain access to the ballot. In 2021, candidates needed the signatures of 40 DNC members, which is expected to hold for the 2025 race.
The 448 DNC members voting at the winter meeting includes 200 state-elected members from 57 states, territories and Democrats Abroad; members representing 16 affiliate groups; and 73 at-large members elected by the DNC, ABC News previously reported.
(WASHINGTON) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrives on Capitol Hill on Monday to kickstart several days of private meetings with more than two dozen senators and their staff in a bid to become the nation’s next health secretary.
Among the senators on Kennedy’s list is Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the GOP’s pick to become the next Senate majority leader.
Kennedy’s chances of getting confirmed by the Senate aren’t clear. His past comments questioning vaccine science and the food industry could lose — and gain — votes on either side of the aisle depending on how he talks about his plans for the incoming administration.
Here are three questions surrounding his nomination:
Would he try to limit access to certain vaccines like the polio shot or encourage schools to drop vaccine mandates?
Kennedy has said he’s not opposed to all vaccines. He says he’s fully vaccinated, with the exception of the COVID-19 shot, and that he has vaccinated his children.
Kennedy also has falsely claimed that childhood vaccines cause autism, even though the study claiming that link has been retracted and numerous other high-quality studies have found no evidence that vaccines are tied to autism.
Kennedy also has questioned the safety of the polio vaccine and enlisted the help of a longtime adviser and anti-vaccine advocate, Aaron Siri, to vet potential job candidates for the incoming administration.
Siri petitioned the Food and Drug Administration in 2022 to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine on behalf of an anti-vaccination advocacy group.
Dr. Richard Besser, a former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an ABC News contributor, said senators should ask Kennedy if he would consider using his new post to discourage local school districts from requiring vaccinations.
While state — not federal — laws establish vaccination requirements for local schools, they rely heavily on the recommendations by the CDC and FDA, which Kennedy would oversee as health secretary, if confirmed. Currently, all 50 states and Washington, D.C. have laws requiring vaccines to attend schools, although some offer exemptions.
“What will you do to make sure that parents can feel comfortable sending their children to school protected from measles, whooping cough and other vaccine-preventable diseases if vaccines are no longer required?” Besser said senators should be asking Kennedy.
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in history and a polio survivor, said last week that anyone seeking Senate confirmation would “do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”
Will Kennedy use ‘confirmation bias’ to review government data
Confirmation bias is the idea that people often seek out information that supports their own deeply held beliefs, rather than be open to accepting new information that might challenge their ideas.
When it comes to the polio vaccination, Kennedy has said he’s willing to say that he’s wrong but that he has yet to see information that would convince him.
“If you show me a scientific study that shows that I’m wrong… I’m going to put that on my Twitter and I’m going to say I was wrong,” he said in a podcast last year with Lex Fridman.
It’s likely several senators will ask Kennedy whether he’d be willing to change his mind on vaccines based on data, or if he’s already convinced that the data is wrong or manipulated.
Critics say Kennedy is willfully ignoring the information that’s out there already. In a letter obtained by The New York Times, more than 75 Nobel Prize winners urged U.S. senators to block his nomination, citing the his “lack of credentials or relative experience” in matters of medicine, science and public health.
“In view of his record, placing Mr. Kennedy in charge of [the Department of Health and Human Services] would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences, in both the public and commercial sectors,” the laureates wrote.
How would he try to change what Americans eat?
Kennedy finds the most political consensus when he talks about America’s obesity crisis and blames the high levels of sugar, sodium and fat in ultra-processed foods. A longtime environmental advocate, he’s also taken aim at the use of additives pushed by food companies — earning him kudos from some Democrats.
“We’re prioritizing corporations feeding us unhealthy products instead of family farmers growing fresh, healthy foods – and we let too many dangerous chemicals flood our food system,” said Sen. Cory Booker last month after Kennedy’s nomination was announced.
“We all must come together to build a system that works for all,” he added.
But one big question many senators will likely ask is how Kennedy plans to turn around America’s eating habits in a way that doesn’t hurt U.S. farmers or heavily regulate agricultural businesses that are key political supporters of President-elect Donald Trump. During Trump’s first administration, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue rolled back Obama-era rules that sought to limit sodium and sugar in children’s school lunches that accept federal subsidies.
FDA Administrator Robert Califf, who will step down when Trump takes office in January, testified recently before a Senate committee that there’s a lot we still don’t know about food science and safety. When the FDA does move ahead with regulation, he said the rule is often challenged in court.
“What sounds simple, given the current state of judicial affairs, First Amendment rights, [is] the fact that corporations have the same rights as individuals — every little thing we do, unless specifically in detail instructed by Congress — it’s not just that we lose in court, but we lose years,” he said.
