Can’t Be Serious’: Trump Official Roasted for Bizarre Take That Migrants Bringing Cattle With Them Are to Blame for Higher Beef Prices
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made a bizarre claim on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo that proved to be a head-scratcher for some on social media.
Bartiromo asked Bessent about a comment made by the CEO of Omaha Steaks who claimed Americans are heading for $10-a-pound ground beef.
“Well, Maria, the beef market is a very specialized market,” Bessent began. “It goes in long cycles. And this is the perfect storm, again, something we inherited.”
Bessent went on to make the strange claim that migrants have been bringing diseased cattle with them across the border.
And there’s also, because of the mass immigration, a disease that had been — we’ve been rid of in North America made its way up through South America, you know, as these migrants brought some of their cattle with them. So part of the problem is we’ve had to shut the border to Mexican beef because of this disease called the screw worm. So we’re not going to let that get into our supply chain. And, again, I don’t want to focus on one product. It’s a very important product. And if we are laser-focused on this product —
Bessent then pivoted to talk about inflation, but social media had questions about his previous comment.
As the U.S. enters Day 13 of the GOP’s government shutdown, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has found someone new to blame: Americans prote
Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos:
As the U.S. enters Day 13 of the GOP’s government shutdown, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has found someone new to blame: Americans protesting President Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda.
Bessent was asked by Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on Monday whether he thought Democrats were prolonging the shutdown to overlap with upcoming “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration—despite Republicans currently having the votes to end the shutdown.
“If, in fact, [Democrats] are waiting for this No Kings protest—you know, ‘No Kings’ means no paychecks. No paychecks and no government,” Bessent said
Scott Bessent is such an entitled prick.
From the 10.13.2025 edition of FBN's Mornings With Maria:
Right-wing media spent years demanding that President Donald Trump ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports. He complied. But rather than declare victory, conservative outlets immediately demanded even stricter measures, expanding their campaign to include intersex athletes and calling for invasive genetic testing. Their goal isn't fairness; it's perpetual outrage and ideological policing of women's bodies.
After Trump signed an executive order to ban trans women from women’s sports, right-wing media figures quickly pivoted to a months-old controversy centered around Olympic boxer Imane Khelif, a cisgender Algerian athlete who was falsely accused of being transgender last summer. Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships, even though she was assigned female at birth. Despite this, conservative media have revisited Khelif’s case as justification for excluding intersex women, labelling the boxer as “male” in order to claim Trump's ban isn't strict enough, and once again moving the goalposts in their ongoing obsession over who counts as a woman in 2025.
The reality: trans athletes are a tiny fraction of competitors
The portrayal of transgender women as dominating forces in women's sports is a deliberate distortion. Exemplifying the kind of misinformation driving this narrative, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) recently claimed without evidence that “we’re getting to a point now where women and girls’ sports are getting ready to be extinct,” because, he said, “Already in states across this country, we have high school teams that are made up of totally boys participating against girls.”
In reality, the number of trans athletes is even smaller than you might imagine. But conservative outlets have amplified isolated cases in order to manufacture fear, portraying transgender athletes as an existential threat to women’s sports.
Right-wing media push for broader bans and genetic testing
After Trump’s executive order took effect, right-wing media quickly escalated their demands. On February 19, Fox News' America's Newsroom highlighted supposed “loopholes” in the NCAA’s regulations that critics claim would allow transgender athletes to compete. That same day, Fox host Harris Faulkner raised fears about the NCAA’s policies, saying that “if birth certificates don’t count … we are in a world of hurt.” Later that evening, host Laura Ingraham carried the topic into the Fox opinion block, attacking pro-trans policies in Maine and suggesting a loss of federal funding could follow as a consequence.
By February 24, Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo suggested that the NCAA could lose its nonprofit status if it doesn’t comply with anti-trans restrictions — framing the issue as a financial threat. Anti-trans activist Riley Gaines escalated further the same week, calling for financial penalties to be levied against non-compliant schools and states and warning Fox viewers, “The war on woke has certainly not been won yet.”
The Daily Wire echoed Gaines, highlighting an ad campaign for a t-shirt company accusing the NCAA of deliberately undermining Trump's policy.
By March 6, City Journal began explicitly including intersex athletes in its push for expanded bans, advocating for chromosomal tests to exclude women with differences in sex development. Its writer asserted that “in rare cases, though more commonly in developing countries, doctors may misidentify a male newborn’s sex due to female-like or ambiguous genitalia caused by a developmental condition. … Just this summer, a loophole of this kind allowed two male athletes, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting, to compete as women and win gold medals in boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics.” If evidence exists for this claim about private and personal details of Khelif and Lin’s bodies, it is entirely absent from the article (seriously, go take a look). According to BBC, the International Olympic Committee has stated that “Lin and Khelif were ‘born and raised as women.’”
[...]
On March 11, a group of two dozen House and Senate Republicans signed a letter calling for the International Olympic Committee to change their eligibility criteria for the 2028 Summer Games in accordance with President Trump’s executive order. “President Trump affirmed the position of the American people and those around the world,” the letter read. “Commitment from the I.O.C. to protect women’s sports is paramount.” Trans women were already effectively banned from the 2024 Paris Games.
Right-wing media influencers revive manufactured nontroversy over Imane Khelif’s gender identity to further expand bans on trans athletes.
The Philippines should allow for the United States to Repurchase the Philippines, annexing the Philippines and turning the Philippines into a 51st, 52nd or 53rd USA State for US Military Support against the Chinese Empire!
Just so I’m clear, South American migrants brought their cattle with them as they climbed over and under the border wall, took all of our jobs, stole our health care, used our snap benefits, and bought every available home.
It’s imperative that we all know what’s really happening so that we can speak truth to power — and hold this administration accountable.
I have to admit this song and dance takes me back about 45 years. The Dow Jones was on a tear in the early 80s and the most popular show about the market was Wall Street Week with Louis Ruykeiser. (sp?) One of the regular guests was one Julius Westheimer, who would weekly wring his hands and say it was all too much and he was taking half his money out of the market. (At least it was a real worry and not a political motivation!) After doing this about 20 times Louis wryly noted half of nothing was nothing.
Kudlow used to be a modestly respected analyst until too many martinis and too much marching powder took his faculties away. He has re-surfaced as a braying Trumper on FOX with not a shred of dignity left to his name. He maintains it's all smoke and mirrors and Trump is the only true saviour of the markets.
And yet he's still not the biggest sellout on FOX. Cough [Maria Bartiromo] cough.
