trump keeps having to tell melania's friends that the treasury secretary is gay. what a job.

Scott Bessent. Photo: Treasury Department, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

via The Axios Show, the Washington Examiner and the Washington Blade

Somewhere out there is a group of women who have seen the treasury secretary on television, liked what they saw, and asked the president to set them up. And somewhere in the White House, the president has to tell them that Scott Bessent is gay.

That is Bessent's account, anyway. Sitting with Mike Allen for The Axios Show, released Saturday, he was asked about having said Trump picked him because he was the best candidate and not because of his sexuality. "Exactly," Bessent said, and then he told the story. "He'll occasionally tell me, he goes, 'You're breaking Melania's friends' hearts. They see you on TV and they want an intro and we have to break the news to 'em.'"

Axios posted the clip on Sunday and the Washington Examiner wrote it up the same day. One small housekeeping note: the Washington Blade's version, out Tuesday, has Trump saying "my friends' hearts." The tape says Melania's. We checked, because if you are going to drag the first lady's social circle into a gay joke, you should at least get the right social circle.

Bessent is the first openly gay person to run the Treasury, per both the Blade and the Examiner, and the Blade adds he is the first openly gay Senate-confirmed Cabinet member in a Republican administration. In the same interview Allen raised the fact that Bessent had once had an appointment to the Naval Academy, and asked whether being gay had held him back. "I don't think it did at all," Bessent said. He added that it may have shaped some of his career choices, and that the "great thing about money management is there's a scorecard."

So the most powerful gay man in the American government spends his days being told he was chosen on merit, and his evenings being, apparently, the most requested setup in the first lady's circle. He is not available. Honestly the second job sounds harder.