In a very unintentionally funny interview between Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and ABC’s Martha Raddatz on the “This Week” program that she was hosting, Raddatz tried to trap Secretary Bessent with a “gotcha” question, and he ended up totally destroying her with his clever responses.
As background, the government shutdown was in the middle of its third week when the interview occurred, making it the longest full government shutdown in American history and one that both sides are desperately trying to pin on the other. The Republican argument, one that seems to be supported by the American people generally, is that the responsibility lies with Democrats for demanding ridiculous spending to which they could never agree.
Raddatz, insisting on the Sunday, October 26 interview that the responsibility for the shutdown’s continuation lies with President Trump, said, in what seemed to be a clear gotcha question, “And today is Day 26. I know you have been over there, but there has been a government shutdown here. People are suffering. Federal employees are starting to go to food banks. Any light at the end of the tunnel on that? Should the President be meeting with Democrats again?”
Secretary Bessent, not falling for the trap, immediately turned the question on her and slammed the Democrats, saying, “What good does it do? Martha, they dug in. The American people are hostage to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries’ poll numbers. Because what’s changed between now and the last time there was a clean continuing resolution is Chuck Schumer has tanked in the polls.”
Further turning the question on her and the radical Democrats that she represents, Bessent then said, “The both of the two guys from Brooklyn, like I call them, are worried about being primary from the left, 52 Republican senators have voted 11 times to reopen the government. Three brave moderate Democrats have come across the aisle. So I call on moderate Democratic senators to end this craziness.”
Adding to that, he hammered Democrats for not even fudning the military, calling it a “disgrace.” He snapped, “You will be heroes, because Martha, what I can tell you is we managed to find the money at the in the middle of October to pay our brave service members, and I think we’ll be able to do it on November 1, but we’re going to be out of money on November 15, and for our military not to get paid is a disgrace.”
Concluding his response to her gotcha question, Bessent then said, “The other thing that’s happening is this is starting to eat into the economy, starting to slow the economy, and we’re also starting to see there’s a problem with air traffic control, so it’s starting to slow down our nation’s travel.”
"*" indicates required fields
She again tried to trap him and make the Trump Administration look bad, insisting, in response, “But Secretary Besson, I should add that the President’s party, your party, controls the White House and both chambers of Congress. You don’t think you bear any responsibility for this.”
He fired back, snapping, “Margaret, what can we do? What? What can we do for you know that this desperate act that they we can call on them to to change their minds, because I can tell you the $1.5 trillion in spending that they’re that they’ve called, that they’re calling for the that’s the that’s not on the table.”
Noting that the Biden Administration left only a mess, he said, “We inherited a mess. We inherited the worst budget deficit to GDP when we weren’t in a recession and we weren’t at war. It was 6.4 6.5% we’ve managed to bring that down to 5.9% and we’re not we’re not going to let them be irresponsible with the budget again.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video