Scott Bessent Embarrassed on Air as He Tries to Deflect Farmer Crisis

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made an eyebrow-raising claim about the soybean crisis on CNBC’s Squawk Box Thursday.

In recent years, China has consistently been the largest importer of U.S. soybeans, typically purchasing more than half of U.S. soybean exports. Last year, China bought $12.6 billion in American soybeans. But since May, that number has plunged to $0, as China has imposed retaliatory tariffs on American soybeans in response to Trump’s tariffs.

Trump effectively admitted that his trade war was harming American farmers in a Truth Social post Wednesday, in which he said soybean growers “are being hurt because China is, for ‘negotiating’ reasons only, not buying.” (He also unveiled a spin-off to his slogan “MAGA” that wouldn’t fit as easily on a baseball cap: “MAKE SOYBEANS, AND OTHER ROW CROPS, GREAT AGAIN!”)

On Squawk Box Thursday, Bessent blamed America’s ag trade woes on former President Joe Biden. “The Chinese followed through [on agricultural purchases] during President Trump’s term in 2020,” Bessent said. “And then, under President Biden, their feet were not held to the fire for these ag purchases.”

Bessent recalled a purported exchange with a Chinese delegation, led by the country’s top economic official, in May: “When I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you continue buying soybeans and the other products?’ they had one word. Guess what it was. ‘Biden.’”

The claim left the CNBC co-hosts momentarily speechless. “Biden,” Kernen repeated softly, before calling B.S. on Bessent using the former president’s own idiolect: “Well, that sounds like malarkey. Come on, man!”

During the Trump 1.0 years, soybean exports to China ranged from $3.12 billion at the lowest (during a 2018 trade war) to $14.07 billion at the highest in 2020. During Biden’s presidency, they were $17.92 billion at the highest in 2022 and $12.64 billion at the lowest last year.

Since halting U.S. soybean imports in May, China has turned instead to suppliers such as Argentina and Brazil.

No matter how aggressively the White House tries to frame Democrats for the government shutdown, the majority of Americans see Donald Trump and his allies as being at fault.

A new poll reveals that more Americans believe that the president and Republicans in Congress are to blame for the current partial shutdown, according to The Washington Post. The Post surveyed more than 1,000 Americans this week.

Roughly 47 percent of respondents said so, while 30 percent said that Democrats were primarily responsible. Twenty-three percent of those surveyed said they were not sure who was primarily responsible for the shutdown.

In an open-ended response format, some of those who blamed Republicans cited the party’s current grip on all branches of government and their inability to negotiate. Some of those who blamed Democrats believed that liberals have “untenable” or “unreasonable” requests for funding the government, while still others echoed false narratives that Democrats are trying to offer government-subsidized health care benefits to undocumented immigrants.

The understanding of who was at fault was, unsurprisingly, extraordinarily partisan. The majority of Republicans—some 67 percent of those that identified with the party—responded that Democrats were at fault, while an overwhelming majority of Democrats (87 percent) responded that Republicans were to blame.

The Washington Post noted that the results of the poll were comparable to past government shutdowns, with Republicans shouldering the bulk of the blame.

So far, the shutdown has furloughed more than half a million federal employees, according to a New York Times monitor. That includes 89 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency, 87 percent of the Education Department, and 71 percent of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Trump administration has been crystal clear in blaming Democrats for the critical congressional failure this week. On Tuesday, it issued ideological messaging via executive agency heads to thousands of federal employees, in potential violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch and the Hatch Act. The near-identical notes were received by workers at the Treasury Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Social Security Administration.

The White House website featured similar messages Wednesday. A banner atop the page reads: “Democrats have shut down the government,” followed by a timer tracking the amount of time it’s been since both parties failed to reach an agreement to continue funding the country.

A since-deleted animated banner above that read, “Democrat Shutdown: Democrats In Their Own Words.” That banner linked out to another White House page titled “Live News” that features a running feed of edited comments from top Democratic lawmakers about the continuing resolution. (The feed was not live, nor did it direct users toward news.)

The Trump administration is doubling down on its shutdown ultimatum to Democrats: Surrender to our backward austerity bill, or we’ll rip more funding and resources from the hands of your constituents.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked Thursday about Trump’s promise to work with Office of Management and Budget Director (and Project 2025 architect) Russ Vought to ax so-called “Democrat Agencies” in the government. “Is that real?” a Fox News host asked Leavitt. “Or is that a negotiating tactic?”

“Oh it’s very real. And the Democrats should know that they put the White House and the president in this position,” Leavitt replied. “And if they don’t want further harm on their constituents back home, then they need to reopen the government. It’s very simple: Pass the clean continuing resolution, and all of this goes away.”

This language reads like a hostage letter, and it essentially is. The Trump administration has already frozen $18 billion in infrastructure projects in New Jersey and New York, and announced cuts to $8 billion in energy funding from 16 blue states as well. The limits of this wanton retribution are unclear, as the Trump administration seems giddy to do real harm to American citizens and communities represented by Democrats who refuse to silently fall in line.

President Donald Trump’s new scheme to transform the federal government into a pharmacy is already raising red flags for legal and health experts.

Earlier this week, Trump announced the launch of TrumpRx, a strangely socialist-sounding service where consumers can procure cheap prescription drugs from the U.S. government—just days before Trump’s 100 percent tariff on pharmaceutical products is set to cause prices to skyrocket. Pfizer has agreed to provide prescription medicine through the purchasing platform at a “significant discount” of on average close to 50 percent, according to a press release from the company.

But not everyone is convinced.

Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University, told Mandatory that TrumpRx was “more of a gimmick” to make drug companies happy. In reality, the site is likely “not going to help the average person” who purchases medications through their insurance. Even with the discounts, prescriptions could still cost thousands of dollars, likely much higher than a typical insurance co-pay.

The White House did not clarify how exactly prices would be determined, and Pfizer’s press release noted that the “specific terms of the agreement remain confidential.”

It’s not just consumers who would be sold short. Independent pharmacists have voiced concerns that the service could hurt their businesses. And The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board excoriated Trump’s move Wednesday as “political extortion” of drug companies, threatening them with gargantuan tariffs if they failed to cut a deal with his administration.

Eliza Orlins, a career public defender and former candidate for Manhattan district attorney who produces social media news explainers, posted a video Wednesday in which she begged her followers not to enter their personal information into the TrumpRx website. “This is one of the scariest things I’ve seen in 2025—and that’s saying a lot,” she said.

“In order to use the site, you’d have to tell the government exactly what medications you take, what conditions you have, when you refill them,” she explained, noting, “And the White House hasn’t said data they collect, how it will be stored, who gets access, or what happens when the program ends.”

Orlins argued that the discount Trump had promised came at a cost. “That cost is your privacy. Because once you hand over this information, it is theirs forever, and you will never know where it went,” she said.

The Trump administration has a history of playing it fast and loose with Americans’ private information. In August, a whistleblower revealed that DOGE employees had uploaded a copy of a Social Security database onto a cloud server, making the information vulnerable to leaks and hackers. It could also be unwise to let the government know your medical information considering the administration’s attitudes about vaccines and antidepressants.

The copy-and-paste shutdown message broadcast by several executive branch agency chiefs earlier this week affected more parts of the government than previously understood.

Treasury Department employees and workers at the IRS also received near mirror images of the ethics-violating directive, according to an internal email shared with The New Republic.

The email, headed, “Planning for Potential Lapse in Funding,” issued guidance for Treasury Department workers on the eve of the government shutdown, including staff furloughs and continued work plans. But it also overtly blames the shutdown on Democrats, in apparent violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch.

It was signed by the assistant secretary for management at the Treasury, John York, a former policy analyst for the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation.

“President Trump opposes a government shutdown, and strongly supports the enactment of H.R. 5371, which is a clean Continuing Resolution to fund the government through November 21, and already passed the U.S. House of Representatives,” the email reads. “Unfortunately, Democrats are blocking this Continuing Resolution in the U.S. Senate due to unrelated policy demands. If Congressional Democrats maintain their current posture and refuse to pass a clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded before midnight on September 30, 2025, federal appropriated funding will lapse.

“A funding lapse will result in certain government activities ceasing due to a lack of appropriated funding,” it continues. “In addition, designated pre-notified employees of this agency would be temporarily furloughed. P.L. 116-1 (which provides for furloughed employees to be paid for the period of furlough at their normal rate of pay once appropriations are restored) would apply.

So far, 1,736 Treasury Department employees have been furloughed, according to The New York Times’ shutdown monitor. Until Congress passes a resolution to continue funding the government, the agency will not issue regulations or guidance. The IRS will continue to operate for the first five business days of the shutdown.

“The agency has contingency plans in place for executing an orderly shutdown of activities that would be affected by any lapse in appropriations forced by Congressional Democrats. Further information about those plans will be distributed should a lapse occur,” the email says.

Employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Social Security Administration received a similar message.

Ethics experts have argued that the message could also be in violation of the Hatch Act, which is designed to limit partisan messaging from federal employees.

York was caught in another internal email drama earlier this year when he issued an OPM-related memo from the official “Treasury Secretary” inbox, failing to sign as the assistant secretary for management while apparently filling the shoes of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.