Trump Treasury Secretary Flails as National Debt Passes $40 Trillion

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried in vain to spin the country’s astronomical $40 trillion debt on CNBC Thursday.

Speaking to the network’s Sara Eisen, Bessent admitted that he didn’t know when the Iran war would end, but that things were otherwise going well with the economy despite the soaring national debt and increasing deficit.

“This Iran conflict, we will get on the other side of this. We don’t know when,” Bessent said, failing to inspire much confidence.

Bessent was even less inspirational when it came to the national debt, telling Eisen, “There’s nothing magic about the 40 trillion number, and we can grow our way out of that,” before blaming tariff refunds for the poor GDP and rising deficit.

“One of things that’s temporary here that’s influencing the deficit has been these tariff refunds, and we won’t have to do that again,” Bessent said, adding that the administration was reinstituting tariffs. “I would expect that our 2026 tariff income is going to be roughly what it was in 2025.”

When Eisen asked if “we have seen peak deficit during this administration,” Bessent replied, “I think there’s a very good chance we have.”

“We are going to be laser-focused, as I said. [Office of Management and Budget] Director Vought, myself, the president; that combined with the vice president’s fraud task force, where I think we could save several hundred billion dollars,” Bessent said.

Suggesting that the deficit isn’t going to increase beyond current levels doesn’t make sense with how President Trump is spending money on everything from the Iran war to his pet construction projects. There’s no guarantee that Trump’s new tariff approach will survive court challenges either. And Bessent couldn’t help but admit that the Iran war shows no sign of ending anytime soon, meaning that his positive forecast is just a lot of wishful thinking.

President Trump’s Justice Department is teaming up with Elon Musk’s xAI to fight Minnesota’s ban on AI that lets users create sexual images of people without their consent. 

The DOJ filed a statement of interest this week arguing that the law goes too far, and is broader than federal law. 

Minnesota’s ban states that “a person who owns or controls a website, application, software, program, or other service must not: (1) allow a user to access, download, or use the website, application, software, program, or other service to nudify an image or video; or (2) nudify an image or video on behalf of a user.” Breaking the law carries a fine of up to $500,000.

The law defines “nudify” as “the process by which an image or video is altered or generated to depict an intimate part not depicted in an original unaltered image or video of an identifiable individual.” It also applies when “the altered or generated image or video is so realistic that a reasonable person would believe that the intimate part belongs to the identifiable individual.” 

The DOJ argued that the law “sweeps up constitutional and productive conduct not prohibited under federal law because of the way Minnesota drafted (and apparently will enforce) the statute.”

Musk’s xAi filed its lawsuit last month on First Amendment grounds after a temporary restraining order request was denied.

xAI’s attorneys argue that the law would hold the company unfairly liable for users nudifying images. They also argue that xAI has adequate moderation tactics in place to stop it from happening in the first place. 

“The state would punish xAI for allowing a user to nudify themselves,” attorney Robert Dunn said to Courthouse News. Minnesota disagrees.

“It’s certainly not surprising that xAI is not coming into federal court and saying, ‘We support these images,’” Minnesota Assistant Attorney General Janine Kimble said to Courthouse News. “They say, ‘Look at our terms of service; we tell people not to do this.’ … And yet, they still are reporting tens of thousands of users creating images.”

In January, Musk himself admitted that his Grok AI chatbot was posting nude images of children at the behest of some of his platform’s most perverted users. He blamed  “lapses in safeguards.” The chatbot also posted nude deepfake images of adult women without their consent—making Minnesota’s law seem all the more reasonable. 

South Carolina Senator Darline Graham has a baffling excuse for her humiliating debate performance—spoiler alert: It involves transgender athletes!

Speaking on Fox News’s Sean Hannity Show Wednesday, Graham explained the shocking moment she admitted she was “not informed on national security,” when asked whether Taiwan and the South China Sea were national security issues for the United States.

“You know, I tripped up on one question last night regarding Taiwan. But you know I’ve said many times, I’m not a politician, certainly not a career politician, I don’t speak politician,” she said. “You know I was just honest, and I think that’s kind of a foreign concept.”

It’s true that a wise woman knows herself to be a fool—but Graham’s foolishness wasn’t finished.

“Of course Taiwan is our friend, but I think people in South Carolina are more worried about making ends meet, they’re concerned about boys in girls’ sports,” she added.

It would be surprising if people in South Carolina really felt that way—considering the state passed a law banning transgender students from playing on girls’ or women’s sports teams four years ago. The conservative-majority Supreme Court recently upheld similar rules in two other states, cementing the status of South Carolina’s transgender athlete ban.

She added that South Carolinians were more concerned about the second amendment, the SAVE America Act, and illegal immigration, “so they’re concerned about a lot of things other than Taiwan.”

Crucially, if Graham can’t answer simple questions about national security, she has no business being on that debate stage. She also has no business representing South Carolina, for in the same debate, Graham also claimed that there were 50 million people living in South Carolina. There are only 5.6 million.

Senator Jon Ossoff, a 2028 presidential contender, has struck gold with his jab at President Trump’s aide Natalie Harp.

The White House quickly lashed out after Ossoff mentioned Harp during an Atlanta rally on Sunday, and ever since then, Harp has been all over the news, with new details about her unusually close relationship with the president being revealed nearly every day. On Wednesday, Ossoff reveled in how he successfully rattled the Trump administration.

“It’s been amazing to watch this White House melt down over this all week. And about Natalie Harp, these White House staffers are adults, public officials paid by the taxpayer, with immense power in positions of public trust,” Ossoff told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell. “And whether it’s Natalie Harp printing out Donald Trump’s daily dose of delusion and flattery, or Peter Navarro steering taxpayer-funded loans to Trump family investments, or Pete Hegseth deluding the president daily into deepening this quagmire in the Middle East, no one cares about their feelings.”

Ossoff went on to attack Trump for being obsessed with building the White House ballroom and flying in a luxury jet gifted to him by Qatar while neglecting military personnel fighting his war, such as the sailors experiencing poor conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, accusing him of retreating “into this circle of sycophantic aides who tell him every day what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear.”

On Sunday, Ossoff called out Trump, saying that “he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.” That touched a nerve, with Trump calling him a “Pee-Wee Herman lookalike” and White House communications director Steven Cheung calling him “Jon Jackoff” and “the biggest cuck loser in politics.”

Since then, details have emerged about Harp’s obsession with the president, from insisting on riding in the trunk of Trump’s SUV in 2023 to stay close to him to writing gushing letters where she says she forgets to eat and sleep. Her brother told CNN Tuesday that she has written letters to other presidents and has “an unhealthy obsession.”

Other longtime Trump staffers have been perfectly willing to (anonymously) dish about Harp and her unusually close relationship with the president for years now, with aides calling her the “human printer” for printing out drafts of suggested social media posts for him to review and articles for him to read. She’s seen as the source of his bizarre social media posting habits, too. The more she is seen at his side, the more the news stories driving Trump’s inner circle wild will continue.

Michael Cohen won’t confirm or deny whether he’ll use President Trump’s Thursday appearance on his podcast to ask for a pardon.

“We’ll see,” he said to Politico regarding the potential pardon request. “Will I make that request down the road? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.” He noted that “people may be interested to hear two individuals that were friends for a decade and a half who have not publicly spoken in eight years” discuss their history together. “What could they talk about?” he mused.

Trump will call into Cohen’s weekly talk radio program and podcast When You Know You Know Thursday evening.

“Beyond ridiculous. Cohen conned so many liberals,” commentator Medhi Hasan wrote on X. “I am glad I was one of the few cable hosts, when I was at MSNBC/Peacock, to have actually grilled him on air and not just uncritically accept his BS and fake conversion.”

It’s unclear what exactly brought Cohen back to Trump. Cohen worked as an attorney for Trump from 2006 to 2018, when he was sentenced to three years in federal prison on charges related to his role as the middleman in Trump’s hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. He wrote a book titled Disloyal in 2020 in which he called Trump “a cheat, a mobster, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.” He testified against him in 2024 regarding the hush money as well. Now Trump and Cohen are apparently chummy again.

Cohen wrote in a Substack article titled “The Impossible Reunion” on Thursday that “forgiveness doesn’t have amnesia.”

“Sometimes the most extraordinary act of courage isn’t winning the fight. It’s deciding the fight doesn’t have to last forever. And sometimes, after everything has burned down, forgiveness is the only thing capable of building something again,” he wrote. “This evening, you’ll hear whether we can.”