Scott Bessent, running one of the three topmost important executive departments in the federal government, has shown himself to be increasingly difficult to work with, often yelling at and humiliating both senior and junior aides.
So says a new report just published in the Wall Street Journal based on interviews with more than 30 current and former Treasury Department officials.
“He has become increasingly emboldened, making unilateral decisions that have confounded even some of his longtime allies and friends,” charges the newspaper.
Even more, “he has shouted at staff for not moving fast enough to implement his ideas and for failing to combat unfavorable media coverage.” At one point last year, Bessent “got so angry about the way his daily briefing book was organized that he picked up the binder full of papers and threw it at a wall, people familiar with the matter said.”
The 64-year-old Bessent was sworn in as the new Secretary of the Treasury just one week after President Trump began his second term of office in January 2025.
In the past nearly two years, Bessent has been one of the most visible spokespersons for the President’s economic policies, while also prominently supporting the war in Iran and increased sanctions on Russia.
Trump, says the Wall Street Journal, has in recent months “only pulled Bessent closer, empowering him to solve stubborn problems in the economy, including higher borrowing costs, intractable inflation pushed up by gas prices, and government debt that is piling up quickly.”
For his part, Bessent has attacked the newspaper for its profile of him. According to the publication The Hill, Bessent said the Wall Street Journal was a “shadow of its former self,” and likened it unfavorably to the entertainment news site TMZ.
Bessent also said that there were only two employees, out of the roughly thirty Treasury Department past and present officials, interviewed by the newspaper who had anything bad to say about him, “versus the 28 who told them I’m a great employer.”
Bessent has also made light of a story that he physically threatened Bill Pulte in response to reports that the then-director of the Federal Housing Finance Authority was undermining him. “Treasury secretaries since Alexander Hamilton have a history of dueling,” Bessent later said about the incident, “and it turned out a little better for the Treasury’s side this time.”
October 9, 2026
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Treasury Department
