An unusually pointed moment on MSNBC’s Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell saw O’Donnell step into territory most of cable news has long treated as a no-go zone: the personal and political contradiction embodied by an openly gay Cabinet secretary who serves as a vocal defender of an administration and movement that has spent years portraying marriages like his as immoral, illegitimate, or worse. O’Donnell’s target was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a Senate-confirmed Cabinet official and one of the most prominent openly gay figures to rise within MAGA-aligned economic circles. The charge was blunt and uncomfortable: Bessent is an apologist for a political project that, if fully empowered, would gladly undermine the very legal foundations that make his family possible.
What made the segment so jarring wasn’t simply the criticism, but the fact that Bessent’s marriage and family life have largely been treated as invisible by the mainstream press. Bessent is married to his husband, and together they are raising children—an arrangement that would have been legally impossible not very long ago. Yet media profiles have gone out of their way to sanitize or sidestep this reality, even as Bessent aligns himself with a movement that openly champions “traditional marriage,” entertains rolling back marriage equality, and elevates figures who describe same-sex unions as an abomination. O’Donnell shattered that silence, arguing that this contradiction isn’t incidental or private, but central to understanding Bessent’s role and moral posture within the administration.
O’Donnell went further, explicitly crediting Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama with laying the groundwork that ultimately made Bessent’s marriage and family legally possible. The history is complicated but undeniable. Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, a political concession to the era that barred federal recognition of same-sex marriage. But it was the Democratic legal and judicial ecosystem that later dismantled DOMA’s core. The Obama administration declined to defend the law in court, supported the plaintiffs in United States v. Windsor, and appointed Supreme Court justices who formed the backbone of the majority in Obergefell v. Hodges, which finally recognized marriage equality nationwide. Whatever one thinks of Bessent’s economic views, Republican administrations did not create the legal scaffolding for his marriage. Democrats did.
That context is what gives O’Donnell’s critique its sting. This wasn’t a cheap shot about sexuality. It was an indictment of political ingratitude and moral compartmentalization: enjoying the protections secured by one political tradition while actively defending another that relies on demonizing people like you to energize its base. O’Donnell framed Bessent not as a passive beneficiary or a token figure, but as a powerful participant in sustaining a coalition that has shown little hesitation in sacrificing LGBTQ rights when it suits broader ideological goals.
Still, the segment raises an unavoidable question: did O’Donnell cross a line? Some viewers recoiled, arguing that invoking Bessent’s sexuality so directly veered into something uncomfortably close to gay-bashing. That concern deserves to be taken seriously. Historically, the media has weaponized sexuality in ways that reinforce stigma rather than challenge power. But intent and framing matter. O’Donnell was not mocking Bessent’s marriage or questioning its legitimacy. He was highlighting that others in Bessent’s political camp do exactly that—and that Bessent chooses to excuse, rationalize, or ignore it. The critique was not “you are gay,” but “you know precisely what is at stake, and you are still carrying water for people who believe your family should not exist under the law.”
Whether Bessent responds remains to be seen. He may argue that economic policy outweighs cultural hostility, or that working within the movement offers a path to moderation from the inside. But O’Donnell’s segment forced an overdue reckoning. Visibility cuts both ways. You don’t get to quietly enjoy the fruits of marriage equality while energetically defending a political project that has made clear—through rhetoric, policy, and judicial ambition—that it would gladly uproot the tree that bore them.
