Over the weekend, regime official Scott Bessent showed up on NBC’s Meet The Press which I suppose counts as “opposition media.” He certainly treated Kristen Welker as such.

It was a painful interview. Bessent conceded very little if he conceded anything at all. He disputed incontrovertible facts and presented speculation as factual, which is to say he behaved just as you’d expect from a man whose boss denies axiomatic truths and in some cases even disputes the veracity of tautologies.

The exchange below, from the transcript of the interview, is emblematic:

WELKER: Okay. Let’s keep moving though, because I want to talk about what US companies are saying right now, Mr. Secretary. The New York Times wrote this about John Deere. Quote, “Last month John Deere said net income in its most recent quarter was down 29% from a year earlier. Higher tariffs have cost the company $300 million so far with nearly another $300 million expected by the end of the year. This summer the company laid off 238 employees across factories in Illinois and Iowa.” What do you say to companies like John Deere who say these tariffs are hurting them?

BESSENT: Well, first of all, Kristen, if you’re quoting The New York Times, that’s not a fair observer. And two, that —

WELKER: These are statistics.

BESSENT: Well, that’s one —

WELKER: This is about John Deere. It’s not about The New York Times.

BESSENT: That’s one company that they have cherry-picked. For every John Deere we have companies who are telling us, “The tariffs have helped our business. We’re increasing capex. And we’re going to increase employment.”

WELKER: But Mr. Secretary, it’s not just John Deere. We’ve heard from a lot of different companies around the country. Nike says that tariffs will cost the company around $1 billion this year. Black+Decker says $800 million. The Big Three automakers all say they’ve had to pay more than $2 billion in tariffs. The list goes on and on. Bottom line, do you acknowledge that these tariffs amount to a tax on the American people?

BESSENT: You know, Kristen, if things are so bad, why was GDP 3.3% [in Q2]? Why is the stock market at a new high? Because, you know, with President Trump we care both about big companies and small companies. And you’re quoting big companies. But the big company index, the S&P is at a new high.

WELKER: Hasbro says they’re going to have to increase their prices. Goldman Sachs says 86% of the tariff revenue collected so far has been paid by American businesses and consumers. So just bottom line, Mr. Secretary, do you acknowledge that these tariffs are a tax on American consumers?

BESSENT: No, I don’t.

That’s what we’re dealing with in America. Or “up against,” I suppose. And it’s what I warned about in “Dark Comedy.”

Here’s another such warning: It won’t be long before companies like Deere are pressured to avoid blaming the tariffs — or anything else to do with the administration’s policies — for poor operating results. (We’ve already seen some version of that with Amazon earlier this year.)

During the same interview, Bessent made it abundantly clear how the administration intends to deal with labor market data going forward, assuming they don’t just make it up to suit their purposes. It’s a simple strategy: If the numbers are good, thank Trump, if they’re bad, blame the Fed.

Where that strategy gets confusing is in Trump’s refusal to acknowledge that any underwhelming data released while he’s president is real. Asked about last week’s jobs report, Bessent said August “is the noisiest month of the year.” “Typically the highest revisions come in August [and] that’s why it’s important that we have good data,” he told Welker. In other words: The numbers are wrong.

But in the very next breath, Bessent said that, “If in fact these numbers are true, it shows that President Trump was right about the Federal Reserve. They are too late.” So if the data’s bad, it’s fake. Or wrong. If it’s not wrong, it’s somebody else’s fault. Probably Jerome Powell’s. But maybe even Joe Biden’s.

“I can tell you one thing this administration is not going to do. We are not going to let the Democrat media surrogates do,” Bessent went on, accusing the previous administration of gaslighting Americans about their own economic plight (there’s some truth to that, by the way). “We are going to push through with the economic policies that are going to set the economy right [and] I believe by the fourth quarter we are going to see a substantial acceleration.”

Notice that Bessent’s doomed to talk in circles. This is what happens when you won’t give an inch on either side of the debate. Either the labor market’s fine and the economy’s booming, or the country needs immediate and deep rate cuts. But it can’t be both. If it is both (allegedly) then guess what? The executive’s almost surely a populist with designs on commandeering domestic monetary policy. It’s just that simple.

Generally speaking, policy’s supposed to be counter-cyclical. The goal of policy — both fiscal and monetary — is to smooth out the business cycle. You don’t hike rates and implement austerity into the teeth of a recession, just like you don’t cut rates and deficit-spend into an expansion. If you’re doing the former, you’re a moron. If you’re doing the latter, you’re a populist.

(As a quick aside, if you’re mixing austerity — or what counts as austerity in a world where no one residing in an advanced economy can tolerate any kind of economic pain — with monetary easing, you’re every DM government of the post-GFC, pre-COVID era and you’re accidentally exacerbating inequality.)

Asked by Welker if the Fed chair or Trump should set interest rates, Bessent dodged. And it worked because Welker didn’t have enough time to press him on The White House’s FOMC overhaul scheme.

“The Fed chair doesn’t set interest rates. The FOMC sets interest rates,” Bessent said, ignoring the fact (and I think it’s fair to call this a fact) that Trump’s avowed determination to engineer a like-minded majority on the Fed Board is in part aimed at securing de facto veto power over regional Fed president appointments.

“Should President Trump have a say [in rates]?” Welker wondered. Predictably, Bessent said what a lot of Wall Street strategists often say: He pretended Trump’s remarks on monetary policy are no different from those of any other US politician.

“President Trump is going to make his views known just like President Biden did,” Bessent mused, before reminding America that Elizabeth Warren “called for a 75bps cut this time last year.”

To state the obvious, the tone and frequency of Biden’s comments on monetary policy bore no resemblance at all to Trump’s Fed criticism. As for Warren, her (admittedly aggressive) lobbying for rate cuts is an argument against making her president, not for Trump’s approach to the FOMC. Just like “What about Iraq?” is an argument against US military adventurism, not for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“Whataboutism,” folks. Learn to recognize it. That’ll save you from people like the guy I was a decade ago.