Treasury Secretary Flips Script On Stephanopoulos
What began as a routine Sunday morning interview quickly turned into a history lesson with teeth, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confronted ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos with a flashback to his Clinton-era rhetoric on government shutdowns. The exchange, broadcast nationally, wasn’t just contentious—it was revelatory.
Stephanopoulos, once a top adviser in the Clinton White House, had invited Bessent to discuss the ongoing government shutdown, now approaching the 40-day mark. The deadlock hinges on Democrats’ push to indefinitely extend the 2022 Obamacare subsidies originally designed as temporary COVID-era relief—measures that were set to sunset after three years. But when the conversation turned toward solutions, Bessent veered off script, and the interview took a sharp, unexpected turn.
“The president continues to post about ending the filibuster,” Stephanopoulos said, teeing up a question that was meant to frame the administration’s position on ending the standoff. But Bessent responded with a verbal curveball: “No, George… And you basically called the Republicans terrorists… What we need is five brave moderate Democratic Senators to cross the aisle… Five Democrats can cross the aisle and reopen the government. That’s the best way to do it.”
When @SecScottBessent reminded George Stephanopoulos “you were involved in a lot of these in the ’90s. And you basically called the Republicans terrorists and, you know, you said that it is not the responsible party that keeps the government closed,” Stephanopoulos tried to shut… pic.twitter.com/LhcfQ2KHq9
— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) November 9, 2025
The moment was more than a jab—it was an ambush by receipts. Bessent reminded Stephanopoulos of the very language he once used to describe the Republican strategy during the 1995 government shutdown: “You said that they were blackmailing the country, and you were trying to say they were basically terrorists.”
Stephanopoulos tried to brush it off. “That’s a mischaracterization of history,” he claimed. But Bessent came prepared. “If you want, I’ve got all your quotes here,” he said, coolly referencing Stephanopoulos’s own memoir and an old PBS interview that uncannily matched the very phrasing Bessent attributed to him.
Indeed, the record speaks for itself. In a 2000 interview, Stephanopoulos plainly described the Clinton administration’s strategy during the standoff with House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Republicans: “We couldn’t buckle… we were trying to say that they were basically terrorists, and it worked.”
What Bessent exposed wasn’t just political memory loss—it was a media double standard. A shutdown strategy once lauded as bold brinkmanship under a Democratic president is now vilified as obstruction when Republicans ask for bipartisan cooperation. Bessent’s point landed with force: if five moderate Democrats joined the GOP to reopen the government, the standoff could end immediately. The math is simple—52 to 3 in Senate vote tallies—but the politics are not.
The moment also highlighted the administration’s broader frustration: a progressive wing of the Democratic Party unwilling to budge, and a media landscape that often insulates rather than interrogates their tactics. By turning Stephanopoulos’s own words into a mirror, Bessent didn’t just score rhetorical points—he shattered the illusion of neutral commentary and reminded viewers of the long memory politics requires.