In a very entertaining incident that occurred back in early May of this year, Trump Administration Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent utterly shut down far-left Democrat Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH). Beatty was attempting to attack Mr. Bessent over Trump Administration policies having to do with alleged enforcement gaps in the Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) rule, along with her desire for there to be a Harriet Tubman $20 bill, which she claimed had been delayed.
It began with the BOI rule, one that many conservatives saw as an absolutely disgraceful attack on the privacy and property rights of Americans, and so one that has been rolled back by the Trump Administration. Rep. Beatty insisted that the rollback was allowing drug dealers to profit, somehow, leading to a sharp exchange with Bessent.
She said, “Would you explain to the American public how you undermine the bipartisan [Corporate Transparency Act] and expect law enforcement and national security agencies to quickly and effectively know the true owners behind shell companies registered in the United States now that foreigners, including a drug cartel gang members, could register a company in the United States with no state or any federal ownership reporting requirements, and I remind you in your testimony, you talked about illicit actors?”
Bessent, firing back, noted that the “illicit actors” to whom she is referring are just small business owners, saying, “Congresswoman, an overwhelming majority, the of the domestic entities that you’re describing are hard-working Americans with small businesses. We bifurcated the bill, and any foreign entities must still file.”
In a performance worthy of notoriously buffoonish Congressman Hank Johnson, the congresswoman said, “So you saying to me, it’s not true that they must file and do the foreign entities must file the BOI.” Bessent then tried to explain that foreign entities have to file, but Americans are not having their privacy rights dug into.
That led to an explosion from the congresswoman, who ranted about “transparency” in a long-winded diatribe, leading Bessent to say that he didn’t know about what she was trying to ask. That led to another explosion and diatribe from her, and eventually Bessent just said, “I am saying that we have bifurcated it, that U.S. nationals do not have to file and that foreign nationals do.”
They kept arguing, and Bessent tried to explain the details of the program, but Rep. Beatty freaked out and started yelling at him because she wanted to ask about removing Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill. She said, snapping at him to be quiet as she did so, “Let me go to my second question. The clock is running. It’s my time. It is my time. You will not do this on my time. Now, I’m going to ask for a few more seconds, since he refused to comply with my time, not his time. In 2016 former Secretary Jack Lew announced that Harriet Tubman was to be the new face of the $20 bill. Can you tell me, what’s the current status of this project?”
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Bessent, obviously uninterested in erasing Andrew Jackson from the bill, said, “No, ma’am, I can’t, but my staff will get back to you.” Rep. Beatty started screaming at him, at that point, about “people of color,” saying: “No, I want you to get back to me, because, see, there seems to be an issue when it comes to things that affect people of color or people who live in poverty, whether it is what you’re doing with Social Security, what you are doing with restricted…”
That, in turn, led to an explosive exchange between Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) and Rep. Beatty, with Rep. Steil telling her that she was “not offering an appropriate parliamentary inquiry”, which in turn led to her screaming about Bessent being a “hostile witness” and screaming “I’m not going to stop!”
Watch her here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video