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Trump's treasury secretary pick turns messy

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

As President-elect Donald Trump swiftly fills his cabinet with loyal supporters, things are getting messy around a crucial economic appointment. The next Treasury secretary will be responsible for helping shape the nation's economy. It has been seen as a two-horse race between two Wall Street CEOs, but their supporters, including billionaire Elon Musk, are publicly fighting over who should get the job. NPR financial correspondent Maria Aspan joins us. Hey, there.

MARIA ASPAN, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.

KELLY: So who are the two candidates to be Trump's Treasury secretary?

ASPAN: So the two front-runners so far are Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick. Neither one's a huge name in finance, but they're both successful billionaire investors. To start with Bessent, he runs a hedge fund, and he's been an economic adviser to the Trump campaign. And Trump has talked a lot about how smart he is and also about how good-looking he is, which matters a lot to Trump. Bessent has silver hair and glasses, and he wears suits. He looks like a banker out of Central Casting.

KELLY: (Laughter) OK.

ASPAN: Then there's Howard Lutnick, who's the CEO of the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, which is not a huge name on Wall Street, but it did become nationally prominent after 9/11 because it was headquartered in the World Trade Center when the towers were attacked. Cantor lost hundreds of employees, including Lutnick's brother. More recently, Lutnick has been overseeing Trump's transition in the last few months, and he's kind of a tough-talking, sharp-elbowed guy. Here he is at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden last month.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HOWARD LUTNICK: When was America green? At the turn of the century, our economy was rocking. This is 1900 - 125 years ago. We had no income tax...

(CHEERING)

LUTNICK: ...And all we had was tariffs.

ASPAN: So as you can hear there, Lutnick has wholeheartedly embraced Trump's rhetoric.

KELLY: OK. So two candidates - we just said, though, things have gotten messy. How so?

ASPAN: It's turned into a little bit of "Game Of Thrones" at Mar-a-Lago. You know, Lutnick and Bessent have been publicly campaigning to a certain extent, writing op-eds and giving interviews about how great Donald Trump is. And some of this is, you know, the usual auditioning. But then over the weekend, things did get messy in public. Enter Elon Musk. He's, of course, the Tesla CEO, the billionaire who's exerting a tremendous amount of influence on Trump's new government. Musk posted on X that Bessent would be a, quote, "business as usual choice," and that Musk would prefer Lutnick. Then Robert F. Kennedy, the former presidential candidate and lawyer who Trump has named to be the next Health secretary, also posted in support of Lutnick. So now we have Trump advisers who aren't at all in the world of economics or finance trying to publicly campaign for their favorite Treasury secretary candidate.

KELLY: So briefly, where do things go? Might other candidates throw their hats in the ring?

ASPAN: Yeah. There are reports that Trump is getting irritated by how public this has become and is now looking at additional candidates. I did reach out to them, and the Trump campaign told me that he will announce decisions when he makes them.

KELLY: NPR's Maria Aspan, thank you.

ASPAN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Maria Aspan
Maria Aspan is the financial correspondent for NPR. She reports on the world of finance broadly, and how it affects all of our lives.