Ben Smith, the editor in chief of Semafor, sat down with Steve Bannon on Wednesday at the online publication’s World Economy Summit.
Bannon, a former Trump White House advisor turned MAGA-world podcaster, weighed in on a variety of culture war issues before being asked about the state of the economy and Trump’s economic team.
“It seems to me that Bessent has– do you think he is now the most important player on that economic team? I mean is he now basically the guy running the economy? The guy running the economy?” Smith asked, referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
“Well, not running the economy, but he’s a safe pair of hands. President Trump’s a very sophisticated businessman, but Scott is a safe pair of hands that understands capital markets deeply. He’s done this for 30 years,” Bannon replied before taking some swipes at other figures around Trump:
He has a very strong sense of what markets need to hear as far as information goes. Remember, the first fight, besides the H-1B visas and transhumanism, the first big fight we’ve had with Elon [Musk] was over Elon pushed Howard Lutnick and Bannon and WarRoom pushed Scott Bessent.
And that got very nasty in Mar-a-Lago. They leaked all kind of stuff about Scott that was not true. And at the time, I said, for what President Trump’s trying to do on trade, on tariffs, on taxes, on national security, you’re going to need a steady eddy, a rock, that the markets can sit there and go, that guy’s telling me the truth.
I may not like it, but he’s telling the truth, that’s Scott Bessent. And I’ll be blunt, if Howard Lutnick had been Secretary of the Treasury, it would have been an unmitigated disaster. Unmitigated disaster and this is about people putting their own interest first, like Elon, versus putting the nation’s interest first.
Bannon’s comments came the same day that Axios reported on a shouting match between Bessent and Musk in the White House last week. “It was two billionaire, middle-aged men thinking it was WWE in the hall of the West Wing,” a witness told Axios about the fight, which did not get physical but was apparently in earshot of Trump.
During the talk, Bannon also called for an official audit of Musk’s DOGE. “We need to have a very specific accounting of what he found as far as fraud goes and waste, and I mean details. None of this makes sense.”
“Sounds like you don’t trust [Musk] not to take data?” Smith pushed back.
“Trust, but verify,” Bannon replied.
Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.
