Scott Bessent Says We've Got Cows [View all]

I've seen the cattle and the damage done ...

We already knew that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was an agricultural expert because of his years of experience as a soybean farmer investing in soybean farmland that he rents out to tenant farmers. Which brings to mind images of Scott Bessent on a porch in the Deep South, rocking gently in the afternoon heat, wearing a pair of suspenders and white pants as he fans himself and sips a mint julep.

But we digress. Fresh on the heels of his doing his best Oliver Wendell Douglas impression for Martha Raddatz recently, he spent this past Sunday morning on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox “Business” show defending the rising cost of beef by blaming ... who else? ... undocumented immigrants.

Sure, why not.

Bartiromo kicked things off by talking about affordability and the high cost of living, which she called “another issue that the Biden administration brought you,” in keeping with the tendency of Donald Trump officials to blame everything on everyone but themselves. Bartiromo, who more and more resembles your scatterbrained 10th grade English teacher that used to pop Quaaludes in between classes, played a clip from the head of Omaha Steaks telling her that he thinks the price of ground beef will go above $10 a pound by the middle of 2026. Which, as hamburger enthusiasts, we’ll admit would suck.

Bessent, perhaps the nation’s most visible example of Resting Smug Face, blamed the price increase first on the beef market being “a very specialized market [that] goes in long cycles,” whatever the hell any of that is supposed to mean. Then he hit us with this:

“Because of the mass immigration, a disease that had been — that we’d been rid of in North America made its way up through South America ...”

Sounds bad! What disease? Measles? Mumps? Dropsy? Black humours? Female agitation?

“As these migrants brought some of their cattle with them. So part of the problem is we’ve had to shut the border to Mexican beef because of this disease called the screwworm.”


Cows like these?

Okay, first, Scott Bessent really needs some sort of cowboy nickname if he’s going to pretend to be an expert on farming and ranching cattle. We hereby dub him “Squint.”

Second, what in the fuck are you talking about, Squint?

We’ve heard some dumb stuff over the years about migrant caravans heading for the US border, but we do not ever recall hearing that the migrants were bringing cattle with them. Is it Bessent’s contention that migrants have been driving cattle through the Darian Gap, across Mexico, across the Sonoran Desert, and somehow catapulting them over the 30-foot-high border wall like they are reenacting the “fetchez le vache” scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Did we miss the video footage of cows riding on tops of trains with migrants, or being driven across the Rio Grande by drovers yelling at them in Spanish? Have we missed scenes of dusty, exhausted Hispanic refugees wailing in agony as they are separated from not only their children, but also their beloved Bessie?

https://www.wonkette.com/p/scott-bessent-says-weve-got-cows