Tone-deaf treasury secretary doesn't care that we're not all billionaires

As stocks tumble, with the stock market experiencing its worst week in two years, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that Americans—who aren’t billionaires like him—might soon begin suffering as the economy transitions into President Donald Trump’s privatized fantasy.

“Could we be seeing that in this economy that we inherited? Starting to roll a bit? Sure. And look, there's going to be a natural adjustment as we move away from public spending to private spending. The market and the economy have just become hot. And we become addicted to this government spending. And there's going to be a detox period,” Bessent said during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

When pressed about the “temporary pain” Americans might feel during this “detox period,” Bessent doubled down on privatization efforts.

“Well, look, there's an adjustment. We'll see whether there's pain. What we are trying to do—I talked about it at the Economic Club of New York yesterday—we are trying to transition from public to private,” he said.