Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent struggled to go to bat for Donald Trump after Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) confronted him with the president’s disregard for Americans’ financial situations during a Senate hearing on Wednesday. (Watch the exchange in the clip below.)
“Do you think about how the American people are paying more for gas, groceries and utilities, since the president clearly said he didn’t?” Hassan asked, citing Trump’s remark that Americans’ finances weren’t a concern of his when he was questioned about ending his unpopular Iran war.
“You speak with the president regularly — are you trying to tell him the truth about how much costs have increased for the American people?”
Bessent swiftly responded by holding up a printout of a recent social media post from Trump, who had shared a claim that “TRUMP’S MAKING FOOD AFFORDABLE” alongside questionable data on select grocery store items that haven’t soared in price.
“Well, Senator, I’m going to have to disagree with you on some of that, because I have groceries are going down,” said Bessent, despite the largest one-month leap in grocery prices in about four years occurring in April.
“And to be clear, since President Trump took office, food price — food, food prices, or as many people like to call them, groceries, food at home in the statistical data, is up 2.5%.”
Hassan then hit back with a blistering question, “When’s the last time you were in a grocery store?”
Hassan went on to say that the average person living in New Hampshire has paid “$3,000 more” for basic goods and services since Trump’s return to office, while America lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs last year.
“So do you tell the president this information or not?” she asked.
Bessent proceeded to argue that aside from inflation, or what he called a “short-term blip,” data on the U.S. economy was “very strong.”
Hassan later used Bessent’s argument to make something “very clear” to him: “Neither you nor the president nor this administration are willing to acknowledge how much more people are paying at the gas pump, at the grocery store, in utilities, for health care, for all aspects of American life.”