Tag: Treasury

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MSNOW’s Lawrence Slams Treasury Secretary Bessent’s Hypocrisy

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.

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Trump Lawsuit Against IRS Raises Serious Conflict Of Interest Questions

A recent segment on MSNOW’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki dug into one of the most extraordinary and under-discussed stories of the moment: Donald Trump suing the IRS and the U.S. Treasury for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns. On its face, the lawsuit is framed as a grievance about privacy violations stemming from the unauthorized disclosure of his tax information several years ago. But when you step back and consider who Trump is, the office he holds, and the long history surrounding his tax returns, the case raises profound conflict-of-interest questions that go well beyond a routine civil claim.

Trump’s tax returns were a defining controversy of his first term, not because of a single leak, but because of his unprecedented refusal to release them at all. For years, Trump broke with decades of presidential precedent, claiming audits prevented disclosure—a claim the IRS itself later contradicted. Litigation dragged on through multiple courts, House committees fought for access, and the public was left to speculate about what Trump was hiding. When portions of those returns finally became public, they revealed chronic losses, aggressive write-offs, questionable valuations, and a financial structure deeply entangled with foreign income streams and debt. Those revelations only reinforced why transparency had mattered in the first place.

Against that backdrop, Trump now suing the IRS for $10 billion takes on a far more troubling dimension. As Psaki pointed out, this is not a private citizen suing an independent entity; it is a sitting president suing an agency that ultimately answers to his own administration. Even if the alleged leak was real and improper, the structure of the lawsuit itself creates a situation where government lawyers are placed in an impossible bind. DOJ attorneys tasked with defending the IRS and Treasury know their client is also their boss. Career officials may insist they can act independently, but the chilling effect is obvious. How aggressively does a government lawyer fight a $10 billion claim brought by the president who controls promotions, budgets, and leadership appointments?

This is why critics see the lawsuit not merely as legal redress, but as a potential vehicle for self-enrichment and intimidation. Trump has a long history of weaponizing litigation—not necessarily to win on the merits, but to pressure, exhaust, or extract concessions. We saw this pattern repeatedly in his business career and again during his first term, whether it was targeting critics, inspectors general, or perceived enemies within the federal bureaucracy. Suing the IRS fits squarely into that pattern, particularly when the damages sought are so wildly disproportionate that they function more as leverage than compensation.

The lawsuit also dovetails with the broader corruption narrative now surrounding Trump’s administration and family. From his hotels and golf courses profiting off foreign governments during his first term, to his children maintaining business interests while holding senior advisory roles, Trump has consistently blurred the line between public power and private gain. The Trump Organization’s foreign licensing deals, Ivanka Trump’s fast-tracked trademarks abroad, and Jared Kushner’s post-White House financial windfalls all reinforced the sense that access to the presidency was being monetized. The IRS lawsuit feels like an extension of that same ethos—using the machinery of government not to serve the public, but to settle personal scores and potentially line one’s own pockets.

What makes this moment especially dangerous is normalization. Each individual act can be waved away by defenders as technically legal, procedurally defensible, or politically motivated criticism. But taken together, a pattern emerges: constant ethical edge-pushing, relentless conflicts of interest, and an erosion of institutional independence. When a president can sue his own tax authority for billions while appointing the people who oversee that authority, the guardrails of democratic accountability start to look frighteningly thin.

As the country heads toward the 2026 midterms, these issues are unlikely to fade. Midterm elections are historically difficult for the party in power, and this one appears especially volatile given persistent voter anger over corruption, cost of living pressures, and perceived abuses of power. Whether this IRS lawsuit becomes a defining symbol of those concerns remains to be seen, but it already stands as a stark illustration of how deeply intertwined Trump’s personal interests are with the public institutions he is supposed to lead—and why so many Americans remain alarmed by that reality.