The Influencers: The People Shaping Trump’s New Washington
This story is part of a series exploring the backgrounds and agendas of the players — the well known names and behind-the-scenes operators alike — who will wield power in Trump’s second term.
It was June in Washington — five months to go until the election — and Scott Bessent was in full campaign mode. The hedge fund manager was not a household name, even among those who closely followed politics, but was prominent enough in Republican circles to be a featured speaker at a conference hosted by the conservative Manhattan Institute.
During a Q&A with the think tank’s president, Reihan Salam, Bessent explained why he had decided “to come out from behind my desk” to campaign for Donald Trump: Democrats “have a central-planning, top-down mindset,” he said, describing their approach variously as “Bidenomics,” “Bidenflation” and “Biden-itis, ’cause it’s almost like an acute disease.”
He also had some harsh words for the woman he would, in a matter of months, succeed as treasury secretary. In late 2023, Janet Yellen had shifted sales of U.S. debt toward short-term notes and away from long-term bonds. To Bessent, this looked like a cynical ploy to pump quick money into the economy: Yellen, he said in his prepared remarks at the conference, had “departed from norms regarding the issuance profile of Treasury debt in an effort to stimulate markets in advance of the election.”