Baghdad Bessent

Here’s what happens when your treasury secretary chooses to serve an audience of one.

Sometimes events come along that are so remarkable, so epochal, that they compel us briefly to drop our myopic focus on national politics, and last night we got one such: If you didn’t watch Ravens/Bills, you really missed out. Happy Monday.

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(Composite / Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock)

How Not to Spin the Economy

by Andrew Egger

Being an economic surrogate for Donald Trump is getting harder all the time. You don’t just need to continue to swear, in the face of all evidence, that the tariff-era U.S. economy is banging on all cylinders. You also need to do it while refusing to contradict the president’s many economically illiterate beliefs, like the notion that foreign countries, rather than U.S. importers, pay Trump’s tariffs.

It’s a tricky dance, but there are those who do it well. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave us a masterclass in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, where—in his smarmy, smartest-guy-in-the-room way—he repeatedly asked the audience: Who are you going to believe, me or these lying economic statistics?

In Bessent’s telling, America’s economy is just inches from the dawn of its golden age, despite a massive conspiracy on the part of its media, businesses, and banks to lie about this. The absurdity of it all was underscored by these three moments.

“That’s not a fair observer”

What’s the administration’s message to companies hurt by tariffs, Kristen Welker asked Bessent. She brought up John Deere, the U.S. farm-equipment company that, as the New York Times reported last week, has been pummeled under Trump. Welker quoted the Times article to Bessent: “Last month John Deere said net income in its most recent quarter was down 29 percent from a year earlier. Higher tariffs have cost the company $300 million so far with nearly another $300 million expected by the end of the year. This summer the company laid off 238 employees across factories in Illinois and Iowa.”

All those are stats straight from John Deere, but Bessent treated them like they were some liberal scheme to lie about the economy. “First of all, Kristen, if you’re quoting the New York Times, that’s not a fair observer,” he scoffed. “For every John Deere we have companies who are telling us, ‘The tariffs have helped our business.’”

“They have to give the draconian scenario”

But of course it isn’t just John Deere. Every company that imports products or raw materials has been slammed by the tariffs. Welker rattled off a few more: Nike, which estimates tariffs will cost it $1 billion this year, Black+Decker, and America’s Big Three automakers.

So Bessent took a new tack: What, you expect companies to tell the truth about their financial straits? “You know, you’re taking these from earnings calls,” he said. “And on earnings calls they have to give the draconian scenario. There are companies coming out and saying, ‘Oh, because of the tariffs we’re doing this.’”

“I made a good career of trading against Goldman Sachs”

This brought Welker and Bessent to the now-standard climax of any Trump-surrogate economic interview these days: the ritual denial of who actually pays import tariffs. Welker brought up an August research report from Goldman Sachs, which estimated that American businesses and consumers had paid 86 percent of tariff revenues so far. (Goldman also estimated that the share of that burden paid by consumers specifically will continue to grow throughout the rest of the year as businesses run out of creative ways to eat the early costs of the tariffs.) The release of that report last month prompted a furious response from Trump, who said on social media that Sachs and its CEO David Solomon “refuse to give credit where credit is due.”

“So just bottom line, Mr. Secretary,” Welker asked, “Do you acknowledge that these tariffs are a tax on American consumers?”

“No, I don’t,” Bessent replied. “You’re quoting Goldman Sachs, so—I made a good career of trading against Goldman Sachs.”

This claim is certainly debatable on the merits. Reuters reported last year on Bessent’s spotty track record as a money manager whose “years of inconsistent performance have contributed to a nearly 90 percent decline in his hedge fund’s assets.” But the claim is most notable as just another illustration of Bessent’s reflex to reject all data about the economy’s performance that isn’t coming straight from the White House itself.

The point of these interviews, of course, isn’t just to convince the American people to ignore the gloomy economic data piling up before them. As ever with the Trump administration, the point of this self-abasement is also to please the audience of one—to maintain good favor in the president’s books relative to your peers and rivals in the administration. (Bessent has these rivalries front of mind right now: Politico reports this morning that he got into a shouting match with housing finance czar Bill Pulte at a MAGA club last week, accusing Pulte of badmouthing him to Trump. Bessent reportedly went so far as to threaten to punch Pulte in his “fucking face”—which both Goldman Sachs and the New York Times would no doubt agree is a sensible thing to do.)

You have to wonder, though, whether Trump’s hermetically sealed praise machine will wind up working too well. The president already is inclined to trust his own wildly erroneous trade instincts over all outside inputs about the state of the economy, and he’s surrounded himself with a chorus of yes-men willing to tongue-bathe his every move. The warning signs are flashing, but Trump is keeping the tariff pedal pressed to the floor.

Tim, Sarah, and JVL are going live in NYC on October 11.
Tickets go on sale today at 10 a.m. EDT.

Bulwark+ members can buy tickets now via our live presale using the code here.

No Time for Wishful Thinking

by William Kristol

It’s sad but true: Donald Trump has had a strikingly successful first seven-and-a-half months in office.

Trump is on course to achieve far too many of the key things he wanted to achieve. His cabinet nominees, confirmed by compliant Republican senators, have been reshaping their departments—especially at the key power agencies—to effectuate his will. Trump has achieved personal control of the federal government in a way no president in modern times has been able to. He’s also succeeded in extending his power to a remarkable degree to many key institutions in society. Worse, the people in charge of those institutions have accommodated him more than even he surely expected.

So Trump and his apparatchiks, at least for now, control many of the levers of American power.

Meanwhile, the demonizing of disfavored groups has proceeded apace. The public discourse is increasingly permeated with what can only be called neofascist rhetoric. We live in an increasingly Trumpist nation governed by a confident Trump administration.

What this means is that if you care about a free government and a tolerant society, things are grim—as grim as they’ve been in our modern history. If we continue on this path for another three-plus years, and Trump continues to extend his power, it’s hard to see how we can recover.

So this is no time for wishful thinking. And it’s no time to pull punches. A kind of fascism has come to America, and it’s winning.

But all is not lost. And one thing that doesn’t seem to be lost is the public. Trump isn’t popular. And even for a wannabe authoritarian, unpopularity can be a weakness.

Trump’s approval is sagging at around 43 percent of the electorate, with his disapproval in the mid-50s. But as the political analyst G. Elliott Morris points out:

Trump’s problem is not just that his disapproval is high. He also faces a disproportionately high percentage of people who say they strongly disapprove of his presidency.

Morris walks us through the numbers. In the YouGov/Economist poll done shortly after his inauguration, Trump’s overall approval was 49 percent while his disapproval was 43 percent. In the latest YouGov/Economist poll, his approval is 41 percent, his disapproval 55 percent. But even more striking is the collapse in the intensity of Trump’s support, and the increase in the number of those who intensely disapprove of him.

The pollsters asked U.S. adult citizens to rate Trump’s job performance. Here are the numbers:

• Strongly approve: 24 percent, compared to 34 percent in January.

• Strongly disapprove: 46 percent, compared to 36 percent in January.

• Somewhat approve: 17 percent, compared to 15 percent in January.

• Somewhat disapprove: 9 percent, compared to 7 percent in January.

In other words: In January, Trump’s “strongly approve” rating was almost even with his “strongly disapprove” (34 percent to 36 percent). By September, his “strongly approve” rating trailed his “strongly disapprove” by 22 points (24 percent to 46 percent).

For all the talk of Trump’s immovable MAGA base, the percentage of the public who strongly approve of him has gone down 10 points in seven months. And for all the failures of Democratic politicians and institutional elites to push back on Trumpism, the percentage of the public strongly disapproving of him has increased by 10 percentage points over that period.

And this is before the effects of Trump’s policies hit. This is before the public sees health insurance premiums skyrocketing and vaccines becoming unavailable. This is before tariffs lead us closer to and perhaps into recession. This is before Trump continues his unpopular effort to cover up the Epstein files. This is before we get more information about his likely illegal order to kill Venezuelans on the high seas. And this is before Trump’s frantic and desperate attempts to appeal to nativism, militarism, and bigotry become, perhaps, increasingly ineffective.

On the one hand, Trump has the levers of power. Power matters. Unpopular authoritarians can succeed in consolidating power.

On the other hand, public support is also an important lever of power. Trump doesn’t have that. Public opposition matters.

But there are limits to what the public can do directly. Some institutions, some people, have more leverage and more power than others. Call them elites.

You don’t have to be a sociologist to understand that in our society, as in all others, elites matter. Today the public is way ahead of the elites. If our elites continue to cower and capitulate, if they continue to engage in wishful thinking and continue to pull their punches, liberal democracy in America could be doomed. If elites show some courage and leadership—and do so now, as we approach key inflection points in the struggle against authoritarianism—they could help save the liberal democracy that has, after all, served them well.

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AROUND THE BULWARK

• Did Trump Just Order a Murder at Sea? On The Bulwark on Sunday, RYAN GOODMAN joins BILL KRISTOL to examine the deadly U.S. strike, as the action points toward a dangerous escalation with Venezuela.

• Here’s a Shocking Idea: Democrats Don’t All Have to Sound Alike… No, Zohran Mamdani does not have to sound like Abigail Spanberger, any more than a Maine oysterman needs to sound like an Iowa activist when they run for office, reminds JILL LAWRENCE.

• Let the Cadets Meet Tom Hanks… West Point’s decision to cancel a ceremony honoring the actor is a loss for all involved, argues GEN. MARK HERTLING.

• Scott Jennings’s Cynical Ambitions… The conservative pundit’s career was enabled by the very liberal institutions he now derides, observes KAIVAN SHROFF.

• Trump’s Blunders Hand China an Edge… On How to Fix It, JOHN AVLON sits down with former ambassador NICHOLAS BURNS to discuss how Donald Trump’s foreign policy blunders are weakening the United States and strengthening China.

• Swing Voters Say Trump is “Meh”… The Focus Group returns, with ASHLEY PARKER joining SARAH LONGWELL for the season premiere to discuss Trump’s summer doldrums… from the uncertainty in the economy, to his Big Beautiful Bill, to his refusal to come clean about Jeffrey Epstein.

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Quick Hits

THANK YOU, MR. TRUMP!: Donald Trump was no fan of Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, perhaps because Biden got it passed into law while Trump’s repeated failed efforts to do so became a punchline during his first term. So it stands to reason that as projects sprout up across the country thanks to funding from the Biden-era bill, the Trump administration would show the proper deference and make clear they had nothing at all to do with them. Right. Right?? The New York Times reports:

In southern Connecticut, the federal government is replacing a 118-year-old bridge along America’s busiest rail corridor. The $1.3 billion project was largely funded by the 2021 infrastructure law that was championed by then-President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — and strenuously opposed by Donald J. Trump.

These days, however, motorists cruising by the construction site might be forgiven for thinking that a certain famous New York developer was responsible for it all.

“PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP” a sign by the road declares. “REBUILDING AMERICA’S INFRASTRUCTURE.”

In recent months, a number of similar signs have popped up in front of major infrastructure projects financed by the bipartisan 2021 legislation, a $1.2 trillion package that Mr. Trump, who left office in January of that year, had passionately railed against. . .

The signs bearing Mr. Trump’s name now adorn bridge projects in Connecticut and Maryland; rail-yard improvement projects in Seattle, Boston and Philadelphia; and the replacement of a tunnel on Amtrak’s route between Baltimore and Washington, according to W. Kyle Anderson, a spokesman for the company.

Read the whole thing.

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DRONES ON DRONES ON DRONES: Although peace talks are still ostensibly ongoing, Vladimir Putin keeps ratcheting up the violence in his pummeling of Ukraine. Last month, Russia launched what was then its largest drone attack of the war to date, with more than 700 drones striking across the country. Yesterday, Russia broke that record again in an assault deploying 805 drones as well as 13 cruise and ballistic missiles. The Ukrainian Air Force said that 9 missiles and nearly 60 drones made impact.

With its conventional assaults having resulted in meager territorial gains, Russia has focused on increasing its capacity for mass production of drones. In July, the New York Times reported that Russia is expected to have the ability to routinely launch volleys of more than 1,000 drones by autumn.

Meanwhile, Trump seems to remain stuck in ‘I’m gonna count to three’ mode despite Putin’s increasingly brazen provocations. Yesterday, a reporter asked the president whether he was ready to move to “the second phase” of sanctions against Russia. “Yeah, I am,” Trump replied—but he did not elaborate on what that might mean, or when we might see it. He just quickly moved to the next question.

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VACCINES: WHO NEEDS ’EM?: Pop quiz, and no peeking: What percent of the American public would you guess is “strongly” in favor of vaccines?

If you answered “less than half,” you’re more cynical than I am. You’re also closer to correct. That’s going by the latest NBC News Decision Desk poll of U.S. adults released this weekend, which included the simple question: “In general, how would you describe your view of vaccines for the prevention of diseases?” In response, 48 percent said they strongly supported using vaccines, while another 30 percent “somewhat” supported them and 22 percent either somewhat or strongly opposed vaccine use.

It’s possible, I suppose, to take an optimistic read on these numbers: A 78 percent on-balance pro-vaccine majority is a dangerous share of the public for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his gang of merry anti-vaxxers to be crosswise of. But it’s also hard to imagine a more depressing illustration of the decadence and idiocy of the internet age. Throughout the 2010s, poll after poll showed anti-vaccine sentiment making quiet inroads among the public: A 2015 Gallup poll put the share of Americans who said it was important for parents to vaccinate their children at 84 percent, down from 94 percent in 2001. That sentiment was turbocharged when vaccination became a partisan flashpoint during the COVID pandemic. And now the anti-vaccination movement has its political champion, RFK Jr., in a seat of power.

Still, the NBC poll is particularly striking for how it strips away questions of vaccine policy and just asks the simple question: Vaccines, good or bad? Not so long ago, it was the expectation of the smart set that the Arc of Online would bend inexorably toward better education, more wisdom, less benighted delusion. Instead, it’s given us a population that’s “meh” at best toward a technology that has saved hundreds of millions of lives over the years and a public-health regime hellbent on tearing that technology down.

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