WASHINGTON—Scott Bessent was fuming.
President Trump had just asked his Treasury secretary to investigate allegations of fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community—and Bessent thought one of his top deputies was dragging his feet.
During a January meeting at the Treasury Department, Bessent confronted John Hurley, the agency’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, yelling at him in front of aides and unleashing profanities. Bessent shouted so loudly that staff working nearby could hear him, according to people with direct knowledge of
WASHINGTON—Scott Bessent was fuming.
President Trump had just asked his Treasury secretary to investigate allegations of fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community—and Bessent thought one of his top deputies was dragging his feet.
During a January meeting at the Treasury Department, Bessent confronted John Hurley, the agency’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, yelling at him in front of aides and unleashing profanities. Bessent shouted so loudly that staff working nearby could hear him, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Weeks later, Bessent discussed with aides the idea of finding Hurley, who had been confirmed by the Senate for his position, a job outside the department, the people said. Hurley left to be U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It was one of a string of high-level departures in the top ranks of the department at a moment when the Treasury secretary was staring down the biggest challenges of his career.
Bessent’s behavior was a factor—and sometimes the most-important one—in the departure of multiple key officials, people familiar with the matter said.
Since he became Treasury secretary in early 2025, Bessent has dressed down senior advisers and junior staffers alike over issues large and small, according to more than a dozen current and former Treasury officials.
But Trump has only pulled Bessent closer, empowering him to solve stubborn problems in the economy, including higher borrowing costs, intractable inflation pushed up by gas prices and government debt that is piling up quickly. At the same time, Bessent has been tasked with ending the war in Iran with a sweeping sanctions plan.
A senior administration official who worked with Bessent said the president’s entire economic policy agenda is on the Treasury secretary’s shoulders. “Scott cannot fail,” the official said.
His backers say his hard-charging style gets results. But 20 months into his tenure at the department, Bessent is facing skepticism on Wall Street and an economy that could wreck Republican chances in November’s midterm elections.
Bessent advised Trump to pursue a “3-3-3” policy: cutting the budget deficit to 3% of gross domestic product by 2028, spurring GDP growth of 3% and producing an additional three million barrels of oil a day. But growth has been around 2%, and oil production has increased less than a million barrels a day since Trump took office. The budget deficit is now over 6% of GDP, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. U.S. debt overall recently topped $40 trillion.
A deepening selloff in U.S. government bonds has driven the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note to highs last seen more than two decades ago, despite a stepped-up buyback program Bessent set into motion to contain the increase. The result is higher borrowing costs for Americans, a perilous trend for Republicans.
The Iran war, meanwhile, has no clear end in sight, although there are signs the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and economic squeeze engineered by the Trump administration is making the regime more desperate for a way out. But the president recently rejected Iran’s offer for a deal and has also told aides he expects another U.S. bombing campaign against Iran after the midterms.
Bessent, meanwhile, has projected unwavering confidence. He has dismissed his critics as “Bloomberg terminal bros,” referring to those on Wall Street questioning his moves, and quipped in a recent interview, “I am the house now,” citing the insights he has gained as Treasury secretary. “You can bet against me if you want.”
He has become increasingly emboldened, making unilateral decisions that have confounded even some of his longtime allies and friends.
And his temper has flared. He has shouted at staff for not moving fast enough to implement his ideas and for failing to combat unfavorable media coverage, some of the officials said. Last year, Bessent got so angry about the way his daily briefing book was organized that he picked up the binder full of papers and threw it at a wall, people familiar with the matter said.
Bessent denied the account to The Wall Street Journal.
“A lot of people in the investment community had hoped he was the adult in the room,” said Stephen Myrow, a former Treasury official and managing partner at Beacon Policy Advisors. Investors are “starting to see him as acting more and more like Trump…and that’s shaking confidence in him.”
This account of Bessent’s tenure at Treasury is based on interviews with more than 30 former and current officials at the department and in the wider administration, close associates from Wall Street and others.
A Treasury spokesman said Bessent “approaches the job with a deep sense of responsibility and urgency,” and “has high expectations of the United States Treasury’s performance.” The spokesman, who didn’t comment on Bessent’s interactions with staff or other officials, said Bessent’s successes included the implementation of tax cuts for families, bank regulatory reform, more than a dozen major economic agreements, the China economic relationship and the program to cut Iran off from the international financial system.
Hurley said in a statement that he was aligned with Bessent on the Minnesota fraud probe. “Scott Bessent is a brilliant and fearless warrior for President Trump and the American people,” he said.
The White House stood by Bessent’s management style in a statement to the Journal. “The level of professionalism and accountability Secretary Bessent has instilled department-wide is one of the great accomplishments of this administration,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said.
Tight circle
At the end of August, Bessent stepped onto a stage at Treasury to unveil his economic plan to end the war in Iran, tethering his political future to a conflict that has stymied the president and his senior advisers for months. Keenly aware that Trump was looking for a way out of the military conflict, Bessent privately convinced the president it was time to trade in bombs for economic warfare, according to people close to the administration.
Bessent and a small group of close advisers put together the plan, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Treasury secretary leaned on Gene Lange—a trusted ally who used to work for him at his investment firm, Key Square Capital Management.
Shortly after Hurley left his role, Bessent gave Lange his duties—though not the Senate-confirmed job—giving him control over the department’s powerful Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, which oversees everything from money laundering to sanctions.
The economic campaign has been dismissed by some foreign policy experts and economists as inadequate to batter Tehran into submission and for not directly targeting the government of China, its key trading partner.
The episode is emblematic of how Bessent runs the department, according to people familiar with his methods. Bessent has consolidated power in his massive agency, often relying on a handful of advisers to carry out the president’s agenda.
That grip over the department has allowed Bessent to be a lead voice on a range of policies important to the president. Bessent’s extensive remit also includes artificial intelligence and the impact it has on the U.S. economy, and trade talks with China. He also advised the president on his choice for the new chairman of the Fed.
The Treasury secretary’s inner circle includes advisers who have a long history with Bessent. Alexandra Preate, his senior counselor and top spokeswoman, did public relations work for Bessent before he entered government. Along with Lange, Hunter McMaster, a close Bessent ally and assistant secretary at the department, worked with Bessent at Key Square, as did Francis Browne, who was recently nominated to be an undersecretary at the department. Browne’s sister, Erin Browne, was recently confirmed by the Senate as Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs.
Last week, Treasury announced David Zervos, a longtime Wall Street market strategist and a top executive at Jefferies, would become a senior adviser to Bessent.
Outside advisers include economist and television personality Larry Kudlow; Lawrence Lindsey, the former head of the White House’s National Economic Council; and Alec Ellison, an investment banker in New York and a fellow native of South Carolina, according to people close to Bessent.
Some who cross the secretary or the White House have been sidelined or pushed out of the department.
As of the end of August, seven Senate-confirmed officials had left the department, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group, compared with zero to two in the past four administrations during similar time periods, including Trump’s first term.
Only one of the recent vacancies under Bessent’s watch has been filled with another Senate-confirmed official. Dozens more non-Senate confirmed officials have left the department since Bessent was sworn in.
The department currently doesn’t have a Senate-confirmed general counsel or head of legislative affairs, nor does it have Senate-confirmed officials overseeing tax policy or domestic finance, although two of the positions have nominees.
Bessent, who oversees the Internal Revenue Service, has also presided over historic turnover at that agency. Since Trump took office, the IRS has cycled through five acting IRS commissioners, and the position is currently vacant. Bessent created a new, non-Senate confirmed role overseeing the agency, appointing ally and Social Security Administration chief Frank Bisignano as the IRS’s CEO.
Bessent’s reputation as a challenging boss has complicated efforts to fill key vacancies at the department, according to people familiar with the matter. Several potential recruits said they decided not to pursue job opportunities at Treasury because they had heard about Bessent’s behavior.
‘Mission oriented’
Bessent’s defenders in and out of the administration acknowledge he can be combative, has a temper and is demanding with staff. But they argue his intense approach to the job is an asset.
“He’s a good person, but he’s got a tripwire and he’s got a temper,” said former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who said he has known the secretary for nearly a decade. “‘We got a purpose and mission here, and we’re mission oriented. And I’m not interested in your feelings. If your feelings are hurt, I’m sorry, but get the f— out of here,’” Bannon said, in describing Bessent’s attitude toward Treasury staff.
The defenders said Bessent puts pressure on his employees to improve their performance and ensure they execute the president’s agenda, a tactic he learned when he ran an investment firm. The secretary’s advisers also criticized some of the staff who have left the department after clashing with Bessent, arguing that they were standing in the way of the president’s vision.
“The secretary is demanding and results oriented. As one of the world’s greatest macro investors, this should not be a surprise. When I worked for him, he was always professional and respectful,” said Joseph Lavorgna, who was a counselor to the secretary for just under a year.
Bessent’s backers also say bond yields would have been even higher without his intervention, and they point to success in supporting the Argentine peso and Japanese yen. And while economic growth hasn’t reached 3%, it has been relatively solid and may be accelerating now thanks to the AI boom.
As an investor on Wall Street, Bessent developed a reputation for his intensity, according to former colleagues. Bessent—who worked for George Soros’s hedge fund, Soros Fund Management, and became the firm’s chief investment officer in 2011—sometimes exhibited streaks of anger.
After a $200 million investment in Philip Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners ran into trouble in 2012, Bessent became angry in a meeting at the firm’s office, as Soros and a half-dozen others watched uncomfortably.
“We had a very animated discussion” over Harbinger’s investment in an ill-fated wireless venture, “which he clearly didn’t know the first thing about, and I think he got quite annoyed when I implied that,” Falcone recalled. “He wasn’t screaming, but it was very heated.” A Soros representative declined to comment.
Falcone reached a civil settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2013 after the regulator said he and his firm harmed investors. He and the firm agreed to pay more than $18 million, and Falcone was banned from the securities industry for five years.
At Treasury, current and former department officials described in interviews a high-stress work environment that veterans of past administrations said was more intense than they have experienced.
People who have worked with Bessent said he often appears calm but can excoriate staff when he is frustrated. Some aides said they ask colleagues about the secretary’s mood before coming into contact with him, and trade advice on how to avoid him when he is angry. Several officials described feeling relieved when Bessent was away from the office.
The Treasury secretary cycled through three people filling the role of chief of staff before settling on Kate Tyrrell in June. Dan Katz, Bessent’s first chief of staff, was among the officials who clashed with Bessent, according to people familiar with the matter. He left the agency in fall 2025 to be a senior official at the International Monetary Fund.
Bessent sometimes lashed out at Katz in meetings when he offered counsel on policy matters, according to some of the people.
In a statement, Katz said Bessent drew on his experience as a successful investor to approach decisions “with discipline, clear judgment, and a strong sense of urgency.” He said he left when he was promoted to a consequential role in international finance.
Trump’s tough guy
Bessent enjoys cultivating a tough-guy image, according to former Treasury officials, who said the secretary found reports about altercations with other Trump advisers humorous. He asked more than one aide if they had read the news coverage of his dust-ups with administration officials.
He had to be separated from Elon Musk early on in the Trump administration after the two men got into a shouting match in the West Wing during a disagreement over the Internal Revenue Service. Bessent confronted Trump’s housing chief, Bill Pulte, at a private dinner in September 2025, physically threatening Pulte over allegations that Pulte was undermining him with Trump.
“Treasury secretaries dating back to Alexander Hamilton have a history of dueling,” he quipped when asked during a CNBC interview about his argument with Pulte, “and it turned out a little better for Treasury’s side this time.”
Bessent has also clashed with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to an administration official and a Trump adviser, at times questioning Lutnick’s competency in his job. Last year, at The Ned, a private Washington club frequented by administration officials, Lutnick asked Bessent if the two men could talk. “No,” Bessent curtly replied, turning his back on the Commerce secretary, according to a person who witnessed the exchange.
Lutnick told the Journal there was no disagreement at The Ned. “That evening, we spoke to the president together. Scott is a key member of the administration and is committed to advancing President Trump’s agenda,” he said.
Bessent’s aggressive approach to the job has improved his standing with Trump, who has long been known as a demanding boss and has told advisers that he likes the Treasury secretary’s feisty public persona. Trump supported Bessent’s move to intervene in the bond market, according to a senior administration official, despite criticism from Wall Street analysts.
Trump calls Bessent almost every day, according to people familiar with the conversations. The Treasury secretary is one of the few senior administration officials who can talk the president out of ideas he views as unwise, some of the people said, such as escalating tariffs. A White House official said Bessent has told other administration officials he doesn’t want the president to view his agency as a dysfunctional operation.
The president has told advisers that he thinks Bessent is adept at calming the markets, and he has encouraged him to help figure out a way to lower interest rates. But during an event in Nevada in April, Trump described Bessent as difficult and took credit for turning the Treasury secretary into a “big star.”
“I created a monster,” Trump joked.
Bessent and his allies have worked to protect his public image, battling reporters in public and private over their coverage. The Treasury secretary yells at his communications staff over stories or headlines he doesn’t like, current and former officials said.
After the Journal wrote a story about Bessent’s purchase of government bonds that Bessent objected to, the Treasury Department blocked a Journal reporter from attending a press conference where the secretary announced his plan to isolate Iran through stepped-up economic sanctions.
The department also revoked the credentials of reporters from the Journal, the New York Times and Bloomberg to cover a G-20 finance ministers summit in North Carolina. Bessent has complained about all three news outlets’ coverage of him. He has also taken issue with the Financial Times over its coverage. In a recent Axios interview, Bessent called the FT a “disgraced publication” and accused them of being “anti-American.”
When hecklers from the liberal group Code Pink interrupted the Treasury secretary at a Washington restaurant in December and criticized the Trump administration’s economic sanctions policies, Bessent called them ignorant and erupted at the owner of the restaurant for not removing them. According to the owner and also a nearby diner, Bessent spit in his own food before leaving.
“When people legitimately question what he’s doing he falls back on ad hominem attacks,” said Myrow, the managing partner at Beacon Policy Advisors. “People want someone in that role who’s less thin skinned and seen as almost boring.”
In June 2025, a day after Treasury sanctioned three Mexican financial firms, the country’s president Claudia Sheinbaum at a press conference called for proof that the firms had been laundering money in connection with illegal opioid trafficking. “We are no one’s piñata,” Sheinbaum said.
Bessent began upbraiding his staff, urging them to publicly push back on her remarks. Treasury staff in Mexico received emails from Bessent aides in Washington that laid out the secretary’s frustrations.
The secretary is losing it, one of Bessent’s aides said at the time, meaning Bessent was losing his temper, according to a person who received one of the emails.
Write to Brian Schwartz at brian.schwartz@wsj.com, Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com, Philip Wegmann at philip.wegmann@wsj.com and Gregory Zuckerman at Gregory.Zuckerman@wsj.com
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