“How Much Does Your Arm Weigh?“: WTF Is Scott Bessent Talking About?

Scott Bessent’s latest baffling defense of President Donald Trump’s tariffs suggests the treasury secretary doesn’t really understand how they work.

During an interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday, host Kristen Welker pressed Bessent on Trump’s decision to scale back tariffs on certain products that had seen price increases, such as bananas and coffee. “Isn’t the fact that you’re rolling back tariffs an admission that ultimately they do drive up prices for consumers?” Welker asked.

“Kristen, how much does your arm weigh?” Bessent asked.

“That I do not know,” Welker said, laughing.

“Exactly, but you know how much you weigh, and you get on the scale every morning. Inflation is a composite number, and we look at everything. We try to push down the things we can control,” Bessent replied.

The implication of Bessent’s response is that Trump officials don’t really know how much anything contributes to inflation, highlighting the administration’s measure-once-cut-twice approach to governance.

Trump has repeatedly claimed to have brought grocery prices down, despite consumers experiencing the biggest price jump in more than three years. He has also pushed claims he defeated Biden-era inflation, even though inflation has steadily increased for the last five months in a row.

In reality, Trump’s tariffs and his crackdown on immigrants have significantly contributed to rising prices—and Americans are noticing. A recent poll found that only 26 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s work managing the cost of living, down from 29 percent earlier this month.

In a move that will only raise the prospect of conflict, the Trump administration has formally designated Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his government allies as members of a foreign terrorist organization. 

The White House is targeting the “Cartel de los Soles,” which describes corrupt government officials, mostly within the Venezuelan military, who have been linked to drug trafficking. The designation lets President Trump place more sanctions against Maduro, focusing on his assets and power structure. Officially, it doesn’t mention the use of military force, but it is likely to make military action easier. 

Trump has already sent aircraft carriers to the Caribbean Sea, part of a deployment of dozens of warships, as well as 15,000 troops, to the region. The administration has been bombing boats in the waters around central America, north of Venezuela, which the government claims are transporting drugs to the U.S., with very weak legal justifications.

The White House has also authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela and is pushing conspiracy theories that the country rigged the 2020 presidential election against Trump. All of this adds up to an open campaign of regime change against Venezuela, with Trump musing about airstrikes against Venezuelan military targets on land. 

While the stated purpose of all of these actions is fighting drug trafficking, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent let slip last week that oil prices could drop “if something happens down in Venezuela.” Does Trump, who is infamous for taking rash action, plan to start a war in Venezuela for cheap oil and a boost to his flagging poll numbers?  

Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly revealed that President Donald Trump’s disastrous 28-point peace plan for Ukraine is really just Russia’s “wish list”—and not a U.S. plan at all. It suddenly makes so much more sense why the plan appeared to be translated from Russian!

Last week, reports began to emerge of a sprawling peace plan that would require Ukraine to give up Donbas—an industrial region in the east sought by Russia—reduce the size of its armed forces, and agree not to use certain weapons, making it significantly harder for Ukraine to defend itself from Russian military incursion. Those concessions caused shock waves through Europe and Ukraine, as Trump demanded Kyiv respond by Thanksgiving.

Original reports claimed that the plan was drafted as the result of a meeting between Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev—but now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is telling lawmakers that the United States had nothing to do with it at all.

Speaking Saturday, independent Maine Senator Angus King said that Rubio had clarified the plan was “not the administration’s position, it is essentially the wish list of the Russians that is now being presented to the Europeans and to the Ukrainians.”

Republican South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds said at the same press conference that Rubio had clearly distanced the U.S. from the proposal. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan. It is a proposal that was received. And as an intermediary, we have made arrangements to share it,” Rounds said.

Two European diplomats told Axios that when they pressed the Trump administration for clarification, they were specifically told it was not a “Trump plan.”

The implication of Rubio’s latest revelation seems to be that after months of negotiations, the United States is simply a mouthpiece for Russia’s unchanging desire for more territory and control.

But some are calling B.S. on the backtracking—including those at the State Department.

“This is blatantly false,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott wrote on X Saturday. “As Secretary Rubio and the entire Administration has consistently maintained, this plan was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians.”

Rubio also pushed back on the claims from lawmakers about their discussion with him. “The peace proposal was authored by the U.S. It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations,” he wrote on X Saturday. “It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”

In a statement Sunday, King clarified that it “has now been established” that the plan was “endorsed” by the Trump administration but maintained that it still “favored the interests of Russia.”

Last week, Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly read the plan line by line to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. But now, U.S. officials have started to refer to the plan as merely a “framework.”

This story has been updated.

Senator Mark Kelly, one of the Democratic lawmakers targeted by President Donald Trump for his role in a video advising military personnel to respect the Constitution over the president’s orders, had some strong words for the president.

“[The president] tries to intimidate Congress, he looks at government accountability as a nuisance,” Kelly said, speaking to CBS News’s Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation on Sunday.  “The message he sent a couple days ago was, he declared that loyalty to the Constitution was now punishable by death. Those are serious words, coming from the president of the United States. He’s trying to intimidate us. But Margaret, I’m not going to be intimidated.”

 “You’ve just heard Jason Crow, he’s not going to be intimidated either,” Kelly continued. “We both served our country, we swore an oath, all we said was we reiterated what’s basically the rule of law, which is that members of the military should not, can not, follow illegal orders.”

Kelly is a retired astronaut and Navy veteran, and the other Democrats in the video also had military or intelligence backgrounds. 

After the lawmakers released the video last week, the president posted several rage-filled rants about the video, saying that it was seditious and “punishable by DEATH.”

Almost all of them have received bomb threats after the president’s online attacks.

On Friday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke to reporters about Trump’s language and violent rhetoric in the wake of the video.

“It’s not just shocking, it’s not just offensive, it’s bizarre, it is erratic, it’s volatile. I think it indicates a mental state that we should all be questioning right now,” she said.

She continued, saying that the lawmakers had “a very clear message to U.S. service members, which is that you do not have to obey an illegal order, and I think that’s an important message to reiterate, because this administration seems to be increasingly trying to go down that path.”

Breaking a year-long ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel struck the suburbs of Beirut on Sunday, killing at least five people and wounding 28 others, according to the BBC and Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Israel says it killed a senior Hezbollah official, Haytham Tabtabai, in an attack aimed at discouraging the militant group from rearming.

Hezbollah has not attacked Israel since the ceasefire began last November, according to the AP.

In a statement, Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun accused Israel of refusing to implement its side of the deal, post-ceasefire. He asked the international community to “intervene with strength and seriousness to stop the attacks on Lebanon and its people.”

This is not the first time Israel has broken its ceasefire with Hezbollah, nor has the country kept its ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

According to the Gaza Government Media office, Israel has violated the ceasefire with Gaza nearly 500 times in 44 days, killing hundreds of Palestinians, reported Al Jazeera.

Yesterday in Gaza, Israel launched airstrikes that killed at least 24 people. One strike targeted a vehicle, killing 11 people and wounding over 20. Hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya told reporters that most of the victims were children.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that it launched the strikes after a Hamas fighter shot at Israeli soldiers in Israeli-occupied Gaza, none of whom were hurt. Earlier in the week, Israeli strikes killed at least 33 other Palestinians.

Israel has mounted more and more attacks on Gaza and on Lebanon in recent weeks, despite ceasefire agreements. The intensified strikes come at the same time as the U.N. Security Council endorsed President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, which would create a “Board of Peace” to oversee the future of the region.

But as Israel continues to kill civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, despite existing ceasefires, it’s hard to find hope that Trump’s new peace plan will do much of anything at all.