The late Alan Greenspan, a financial powerhouse and federal chairman under four U.S. presidents, once famously said, “I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
Such is the language of national finance.
Scott Bessent, Trump’s openly gay secretary of the Treasury, seemed to be trying to channel Greenspan recently in an effort to explain why the national debt crossed $40 trillion, a staggering amount.
The national debt is the amount of money the U.S. government has borrowed over time to cover budget shortfalls. It comes to about $117 thousand per American citizen. It is money owed to other governments, institutions and the Federal Reserve Bank.
According to the US Treasury Fiscal Data website, it is like using a credit card to buy goods and services and “not paying off the full balance each month.” That means interest must be paid on the remaining balance.
Annual interest payments by the government, according to the Treasury, exceed $1 trillion, “making it one of the largest expenses in the federal budget.”
“The $40 trillion is a big number,” Bessent replied to a reporter’s question. “We’re going to have to grow our way out of this,” he added.
He then launched into the blame game. Tariff refunds, ordered by court rulings, according to Bessent, account for “most of the increase in the deficit.”
“The Biden administration,” he offered as part of his explanation, “had the highest deficit to GDP in history when we weren’t at war or weren’t in a recession.”
That’s not quite accurate. The highest deficit to GDP (14.5 percent of the GDP) occurred in 2020, when Donald Trump was President. Biden took office the next January.
“And then there was the nearly $1 billion tariff refund to Target and $2 billion to Walmart,” Bessent said. That Target refund accounts for 0.0025 percent of the nation’s debt.
Who is Scott Kenneth Homer Bessent? How did he end up as a member of what some call Trump’s gay cabal of advisors?
Born in Conway, South Carolina, his father owned one of the early real estate firms in the Myrtle Beach-Grand Strand area. His mother ran the company when Scott’s father fell ill. Scott would eventually go into the real estate business.
Bessent was headed to the US Naval Academy after graduating from high school but decided against a military career because, according to a Wall Street Journal article, he did not want to have to lie about his sexual orientation.
He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Yale in 1984, majoring in political science. He would return to Yale from 2006 to 2011 as an adjunct professor of economic history.
From Yale, Bessent went into the world of finance, initially working for Brown Brothers Harriman. In 2015, he created Key Square Group, a hedge fund that received an initial $2 billion in startup funds from Democratic Party supporter George Soros.
According to a New York Times report, Bessent, a donor and fundraiser for numerous Democratic candidates including Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Barack Obama, jumped the fence to MAGA land when he was chosen by Trump to head the Treasury.
The Times article also stated that Bessent has donated “about $15 million to political causes over the years, and all but $300,000 has gone to Republicans.”
He donated $1 million to the 2016 inauguration of Trump
He is the first openly gay treasury secretary and, according to Will Trinkle as quoted by the Times, “was a strong advocate for gay rights and marriage equality.”
Bessent and his husband, John Freeman, are partners not only in life but in business as well, buying, renovating and selling numerous properties. A home in Charleston, South Carolina, bought by the couple for $6.5 million sold in 2025 for more than $20 million, which, according to the Charleston Post and Courier, is the most ever paid for a house in the historic city.
Last year, an article ran in the NY Times titled “Donald Trump’s Big Gay Government,” reporting on the group of A-list gays who populate the administration. They also hang out with other major administration personnel at a private social facility called Ned’s Club Washington DC, right around “the corner from the White House.”
A frequent visitor is Charles Moran, who is openly gay and serves as the associate administrator for external affairs at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Moran was previously the national president of the Log Cabin Republicans.
That roster of A-list gays includes Tony Fabrizio, President Trump’s pollster; Trent Morse, deputy assistant to the President; Richard Grenell, who headed the Kennedy Center before it was closed; and Jacob Helberg, an undersecretary of state. According to McCreesh, “There are a lot of other lesser-known men who make up the tribe.”
In the article, the reporter states what many know to be the truth. “The most powerful out gay man in the Trump administration,” he writes, “is Mr. Bessent.” He and the other members of Trump’s gaggle of gays, according to the article, are “not the type to be telling anyone their pronouns or using the word ‘queer.’”
They are gay. They are Republicans. They are, as Moran is quoted as saying, “on the Trump train.”
This story is brought to you by Rosedale Health and Wellness and Dudley’s Place.
