Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sent a handwritten note to Senator Elizabeth Warren wishing her a "Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day," a jab at her past claims of Native American heritage, according to reports of the letter exchange.
The note was included in Bessent's response to what his team describes as Warren's latest missive demanding answers on Treasury Department efforts to reduce borrowing costs. According to reporting on the exchange, the Massachusetts Democrat has sent more than one hundred letters to Bessent since the start of the second Trump administration.
"Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day in advance to you and your family," Bessent wrote, according to Fox Business Network. The secretary discussed the exchange during an appearance on "Fox and Friends" over the weekend.
"Senator Warren loves to write letters," Bessent said. "More than writing the letters, she loves to leak them to the press. That I read about the letter on Bloomberg and Politico before we receive it, and a lot of these letters are embarrassing."
The treasury secretary characterized Warren's correspondence as "economically illiterate" and pointed to what he described as a fundamental confusion in her understanding of monetary policy.
"I can't remember whether it was one, two, three, four letters ago she confused a currency swap with a currency intervention," Bessent said. "Then she accused us of doing a bond market intervention. We've been doing it since 2024."
Bessent noted that Warren serves as ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee and also sits on the Senate Finance Committee, arguing that her position makes the errors more significant.
"So like this level of illiteracy, whether it's her or her staff, it is woeful," he said.
The exchange drew immediate attention across social media, with the account @MarioNawfal posting clips of the interview and quoting Bessent's remarks. The account @gatewaypundit characterized the exchange as Bessent "savaging" Warren, while @RedState described it as a "brutal schooling on economy." The New York Post's account @nypost highlighted the "cheeky clapback" with the headline referencing President Trump's nickname for Warren.
During the interview, co-host Charlie Hurt joked that Bessent should try "smoke signals" instead of letters if he wants Warren to understand his responses.
"Well, I'll tell you the other shocking thing, not a single legacy media outlet has called her out on this," Bessent said. "No one has said like, what is going on in the senior senator from Massachusetts office? What do they do all day? Did they sit around and like, you know, sip herbal tea and think about raising taxes?"
The secretary explained that he customarily adds handwritten notes to his official correspondence and chose green ink for the occasion, which he described as "treasury green."
"I've got high cheekbones; all three of you got high cheekbones," he said, referencing the Fox hosts. "It doesn't make us indigenous people, but that somehow became the Warren family legacy."
Warren's claims to Native American ancestry became a political flashpoint during her 2020 presidential campaign. Genetic testing subsequently indicated she has between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American heritage, with the analysis finding she is approximately 95 percent European. In 1984, she authored a Native American cookbook and identified as Cherokee, and she listed herself as "Native American" in a State Bar of Texas survey two years later. Harvard Law School, her employer at the time, described her as Native American in federal paperwork between 1995 and 2004.
President Trump seized on the controversy during his first term, dubbing her "Pocahontas" and offering to donate one million dollars to a charity of her choice if she took a test to prove her claims.
The ongoing letter exchange between Bessent and Warren has become a recurring feature of the administration's economic messaging. According to reporting, Warren fired off her latest correspondence on October tenth demanding answers on what the Treasury Department has been doing to slash borrowing costs for the public.
The social media account @funder posted separately about Warren's oversight efforts, claiming the senator wants the Pentagon's own investigator to follow money from Trump's sons to companies they backed. That account asserted new reports have already found where some of it ends up. Next News Network could not independently verify the claims made in that post.
The broader exchange has been covered across conservative media outlets, with PJ Media noting Bessent offered Warren a "Foreign Exchange for Dummies" tutorial alongside the holiday greeting. Twitchy characterized the handwritten addendum as "Heap Big OUCH."
Bessent has served as Treasury Secretary in the second Trump administration and has been described by supporters as effective in using financial tools to pressure foreign adversaries. RedState noted his work on taking down the Iranian regime through financial measures.
Our Take
Scott Bessent has accomplished something rare in Washington: he made Elizabeth Warren's letter-writing campaign backfire. For years, the Massachusetts senator has used official correspondence as a political weapon, firing off missives designed to generate headlines and embarrass the administration. The strategy relies on the assumption that bureaucrats will respond defensively, creating the appearance of scandal or incompetence.
Bessent flipped that script entirely. Instead of cowering, he responded with humor and substance, exposing the economic illiteracy at the heart of Warren's oversight efforts. The handwritten note about Indigenous Peoples' Day was a masterstroke precisely because it refused to take her seriously on her own terms. Warren has spent years trying to live down her ancestry claims, and Bessent's gentle reminder in green ink was more effective than any press release could have been.
The exchange also highlights a genuine policy problem: the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee apparently cannot distinguish between a currency swap and a currency intervention. That is not a minor semantic quibble. These are fundamentally different tools with different implications for markets and the economy. If Warren truly does not understand the difference, she has no business conducting oversight of the Treasury Department. If her staff does not understand, she has a management problem.
Bessent's observation that legacy media has not called out this level of error is telling. When a Republican official misstates basic economic concepts, the press treats it as front-page news. When a Democratic senator does the same, the story disappears. That double standard is exactly why conservatives have abandoned traditional outlets in droves.
The Trump administration has assembled a team that fights back, and Bessent is proving to be one of its most effective communicators. He understands that the best response to unserious oversight is not a defensive memo but a confident counterpunch. The American people deserve a Treasury Secretary who knows his subject and is not afraid to say so.
Elizabeth Warren wanted to make headlines. She succeeded, just not the way she intended.
