If you come at a career business savant like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, you better not miss. CBS Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan hilariously had to learn that the hard way on Sunday.
Brennan tried to corner the Treasury Department head from a number of fronts on the economy, such as tariffs and inflation. In response, Bessent repeatedly made Brennan look completely foolish.
Regarding inflation in particular, Brennan whipped out a piece by anti-Trumper strategist Karl Rove (whom she dubbed a “conservative”), arguing that Walmart wouldn’t be able to break even if it just ate the tariffs President Donald Trump was placing on imported goods, thereby leading to higher prices on consumers. “Before consumers, the reality is there will either be less inventory or things at higher prices or both."
Bessent was quick on the draw, and reminded Brennan that she was one of the Armageddon geniuses prophesying the supposedly impending catastrophe of spiking inflation since March, which has not materialized. “Margaret, in March you said there would be big inflation. There hasn’t been any inflation,” Bessent retorted. “Actually the inflation numbers are the best in four years, so why don't we stop trying to say this could happen and wait and see what does happen?”
Game. Set. Match.
Brennan tried to recover from that burn: “Just trying to gauge for people planning ahead here,” but she couldn’t escape from the fact that Bessent was absolutely right. During a March 2 appearance on Face the Nation, Brennan tried to scold Bessent on the incredible damage Trump’s tariffs would supposedly do to prices:
If the President does roll out the 10% tariffs that he says are coming on China this week, the 25% on Canada and Mexico, how much do you think they will impact what Americans experience? The Peterson Institute says it will cost households an additional $1,200 a year.
But recent data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that personal income spiked at a much hotter-than-expected clip of 0.8 percent against expectations of 0.3 percent in April, after Trump’s tariffs went into effect. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, which acts as the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, actually slowed more than expected to 2.1 percent. That’s just shy of the Fed’s two percent target before it begins cutting interest rates. The Labor Department also released its own inflation report showing a welcome unexpected slowdown in the increase of consumer prices against economists’ expectations.
But like her cohorts at other outlets like CNN and the Associated Press, Brennan will squeeze every ounce of juice out of the spin narrative that Americans will eventually witness economic doomsday under Trump, even at the risk of potentially looking like a complete idiot if it doesn’t come to fruition.
