Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tore into Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in a viral exchange this week, calling her "economically illiterate" and mocking her past claims of Native American heritage. The comments, made during an interview, were flagged by the rapid response team and quickly spread across social media.
Bessent began by criticizing Warren's habit of writing letters to his department. "Senator Warren loves to write letters more than writing the letters she loves to leak them to the press," he said. "I read about the letter on Bloomberg and Politico before we receive it and a lot of these letters are embarrassing."
He then detailed what he called her lack of basic economic knowledge. "A lot of these letters are embarrassing and Rachel as you said economically illiterate. I can't remember what was one two three four letters ago. She confused a currency swap with a currency intervention. Then she accused us of doing a bond market intervention. We'd been doing it since 2024."
Bessent: Warren's Staff 'Woof'
Bessent pointed to Warren's position on key Senate committees to underscore what he sees as a troubling pattern. "The shocking thing here—she is the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee and she is on Senate Finance. So like this level of illiteracy whether it's her or her staff. Right. It is is woof."
He then turned to her past claims of indigenous ancestry. "And look, I wish her happy indigenous people's day to her and her family. Give them some of the past claim she's made."
Bessent also jabbed at the ongoing correspondence. "Maybe the problem is that you keep trying to exchange letters with her and you should be doing smoke signals and then she would be able to understand it."
Media Silence and a Handwritten Note
Bessent expressed frustration that the legacy media has not scrutinized Warren's economic missteps. "The other shocking thing—not a single legacy media outlet has called her out on this. No one has said like what is going on in the senior senator from Massachusetts office? What do they do all day?"
He continued with a sarcastic tone: "Did they like sit around and like you know sip herbal tea and think about raising taxes? Or smoke a tobacco pipe."
The exchange also touched on a handwritten note Bessent added to a recent letter. "I always with my letters like to add a handwritten note at the end and you know given what I think everyone on this set calls Columbus Day," he said. "I've got high cheekbones—all three of you got high cheekbones. That doesn't make us indigenous people, but that's somehow became the Warren family legacy."
The video clip, posted by @RapidResponse47, has racked up over 2,200 likes and counting, with conservatives praising Bessent for taking the fight directly to Warren.
