Bessent on What Trump and Soros have in Common

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00:00Really interesting to hear about the Treasury Secretary comparing the two most unlikely people

00:06to be compared, George Soros and Donald Trump. The idea of patience is pretty interesting here

00:10because a lot of Wall Street has relied on Besant to kind of preach patience. And it looks like,

00:17from your reporting, that that is a very similar relationship that he is building with the tech

00:23community too. So what sources told me was this was a moderated Q&A late on Wednesday morning,

00:28and he was asked, compare your current boss, Donald Trump, to your former boss, George Soros.

00:33Besant did two stints at Soros Management, right? And he said they're very similar in their ability

00:39to do deals, but they are both impatient. And he said that as Treasury Secretary, I counsel and

00:44advocate patience to the president. He also talks a little bit about his outlook for rates, which is

00:49quite interesting. He said we basically see two cuts to rates, one full cut, one half cut in the

00:55balance of this year because of the strength of the economy. But the nuance in what he was saying,

01:00sources tell me, is that he doesn't expect rates to go back to where they were in the pandemic,

01:04right? Which is kind of what the president's been talking about. What he sees is rates kind of going

01:09back to normal but elevated levels that they were pre-pandemic. And the final bit that we heard him

01:14discuss was he was asked about Elon Musk's political party, the American party. And what sources told me was

01:19he said, what party? And then joked that Elon Musk could get votes on Mars in the future, a reference,

01:25of course, to Elon's ambitions for humankind on a different planet. But you're right. This was

01:31about him balancing his persona with the investor base. He's been a long-running attendee at Allen & Co.

01:38and his loyalty to the president. And he was very praising of the president's ability to do

01:43a deal, find problems, find fixes.