WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Breitbart News exclusively on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s administration is employing an “all hands on deck” whole-of-government approach to undoing the damage to the economy that Democrats like former President Joe Biden left behind.
Bessent sat with Breitbart News for a more-than-half-hour-long exclusive on-camera interview in the Salmon Chase Suite at Treasury Department headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, next door to the White House. The suite, named for onetime treasury secretary and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Salmon Chase, is one of the most historic offices in the building. It is in this room where Chase and then-President Abraham Lincoln developed much of the modern monetary policy for the United States as a way to finance the preservation of the American Republic during the Civil War. Greenbacks, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and even the IRS can trace their roots to this room.
Bessent has been on the job now for a little over a month — he was Senate-confirmed on Feb. 3, 2025. And new numbers released this week on inflation show that in his first month on the job, the first full month of Trump’s presidency, both consumer prices and producer prices are coming in better than expected by economists. While the administration is not out of the woods yet regarding the American economy, Bessent clearly is expressing optimism about the long-term views of the nation. Asked about this major development, and what more there is to be done, Bessent said the Trump White House “inherited” an “affordability crisis” from Biden and that right now the administration is doing everything it can to prevent “recursive Biden-flation.”
“You’re exactly right, but there were a lot of things that were out of control. So, the inflation was out of control. We inherited an affordability crisis,” Bessent told Breitbart News. “Hopefully, we don’t get a recursive Biden-flation. We’re very vigilant. It could happen again. But we are doing everything we can to keep it down. Before we can bring down inflation, we also want to help affordability. So, as we bring down inflation, we want to bring the absolute price level down through deregulation and bringing down interest rates for house payments and car payments. Then, on inflation, we are seeing some nascent signs, I’d say. Crude oil is down about 15 percent since President Trump took office. That’s something we’re focused on. Mortgage rates have come down every week since he’s been in office. So, there’s some good signs but as you said, there was a lot of blowout spending and a lot of blowout inflation.”
Asked what Trump’s team has already done to help fight this economic disaster that Biden left behind, Bessent said the “first thing” has been to get government spending “under control,” and he pointed to the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by businessman Elon Musk. Then he pointed to work U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins has done to bring down the price of eggs — and then to what Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are doing to unleash American energy production. This broad vision, he said, is an “all-hands-on-deck, all areas of government” approach to stabilizing the U.S. economy.
“The first thing is to get the spending under control. I’ve said it several times that the mainstream media likes to lampoon or parody DOGE,” Bessent said. “But this is serious business. I think there is no one out there who thinks that the federal government couldn’t do things in a better way with less personnel and in a more effective way dollar for dollar. So we’re trying to bring down the spending and we’re determined to do that. We’re trying to rightsize the federal government. We are committed to that. As I mentioned, we’ve got oil prices down. Secretary Rollins had a very good plan to get egg prices down. So the media sort of touted it when they were going up, but now they’re down 25 percent from the peak, and we don’t hear much about that. So it’s a kind of an all-hands-on-deck, all areas of government, that we are trying to do that. Secretary Burgum and Secretary Wright are working on energy plans whether it’s permitting or this pipeline on the east coast that will bring prices down — we need the governor of New York to be our partner on that. So there’s a lot of good things happening.”
What is perhaps most amazing to Bessent, though, is just how bad the establishment and legacy media have been during Trump’s presidency in covering the economy. Bessent told Breitbart News he does not believe the term “fake news” is strong enough to describe just how inaccurate and off they are.
“When I was on the other side of the wall, I never really liked the term ‘fake news,’” Bessent said when asked about the establishment media. “Now that I am on the inside, and I can see what they’re reporting, I think the term ‘fake news’ probably isn’t strong enough. It’s really not. They start with an apriori and they’ve written the story, and they’re just going to shapeshift facts to back into it. Many of the stories I’ve been involved with are just so far off — so far off. There was a story in the New York Times the other day that talked about 50 percent headcount decreases at the IRS. Nobody is talking about that. These were on background. They were not named sources — and they’re just trying to stir tumult during the taxpayer filing season. It’s crazy.”
Much more from Secretary Bessent’s interview with Breitbart News at the Treasury Department is forthcoming.
