Scott Bessent Says We've Got Cows
I've seen the cattle and the damage done ...
We already knew that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was an agricultural expert because of his years of experience as a soybean farmer investing in soybean farmland that he rents out to tenant farmers. Which brings to mind images of Scott Bessent on a porch in the Deep South, rocking gently in the afternoon heat, wearing a pair of suspenders and white pants as he fans himself and sips a mint julep.
But we digress. Fresh on the heels of his doing his best Oliver Wendell Douglas impression for Martha Raddatz recently, he spent this past Sunday morning on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox “Business” show defending the rising cost of beef by blaming ... who else? ... undocumented immigrants.
Sure, why not.
Bartiromo kicked things off by talking about affordability and the high cost of living, which she called “another issue that the Biden administration brought you,” in keeping with the tendency of Donald Trump officials to blame everything on everyone but themselves. Bartiromo, who more and more resembles your scatterbrained 10th grade English teacher that used to pop Quaaludes in between classes, played a clip from the head of Omaha Steaks telling her that he thinks the price of ground beef will go above $10 a pound by the middle of 2026. Which, as hamburger enthusiasts, we’ll admit would suck.
Bessent, perhaps the nation’s most visible example of Resting Smug Face, blamed the price increase first on the beef market being “a very specialized market [that] goes in long cycles,” whatever the hell any of that is supposed to mean. Then he hit us with this:
“Because of the mass immigration, a disease that had been — that we’d been rid of in North America made its way up through South America ...”
Sounds bad! What disease? Measles? Mumps? Dropsy? Black humours? Female agitation?
“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 screwworm.”
Okay, first, Scott Bessent really needs some sort of cowboy nickname if he’s going to pretend to be an expert on farming and ranching cattle. We hereby dub him “Squint.”
Second, what in the fuck are you talking about, Squint?
We’ve heard some dumb stuff over the years about migrant caravans heading for the US border, but we do not ever recall hearing that the migrants were bringing cattle with them. Is it Bessent’s contention that migrants have been driving cattle through the Darian Gap, across Mexico, across the Sonoran Desert, and somehow catapulting them over the 30-foot-high border wall like they are reenacting the “fetchez le vache” scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Did we miss the video footage of cows riding on tops of trains with migrants, or being driven across the Rio Grande by drovers yelling at them in Spanish? Have we missed scenes of dusty, exhausted Hispanic refugees wailing in agony as they are separated from not only their children, but also their beloved Bessie?
You can watch the start of this segment at the 5:31 mark in this video, or if you did something naughty over the weekend for which you need to be punished, you can watch the whole thing:
Because we love you people, we looked this up. The screwworm is a parasitic fly that implants its larvae into the flesh of warm-blooded animals, particularly livestock. It can also find its way into humans, though that is apparently very, very rare. You definitely do not want it to infect the nation’s cattle supply. That would be a huge agricultural crisis.
Bessent is correct that the screwworm was eradicated in North America in the mid-1960s. And yes, this latest infestation has spread across Mexico to the northern part of the country. The next stop is obviously Texas, where there is much freaking out and discussion of what to do.
But blaming the infestation on migrants bringing cattle with them as they make the trek north? Whew, that is some serious xenophobia, the sort that makes you want to suggest Bessent wear a white hood for his next Bartiromo appearance.
A mere 24 hours after Bessent’s appearance on Bartiromo’s show, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins sat down with the former “money honey” and was asked about the same issue. Rollins blamed the high cost of beef on a few things, including the screwworm (which she claimed is under control south of the border). But mostly she blamed it on Joe Biden’s “literal war on cattle.”
Who can forget when Joe Biden kept drone-striking America’s cattle herds in an effort to reduce greenhouse gases. Truly they were the Venezuelan drug boats of the Biden administration.
Some bloodthirsts just cannot be quenched.
THIS OPEN THREAD’S GOT COWS.
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Bear and Harry picture. So cute to see them side by side because Harry looks tiny. But if you saw them standing up next to each other, Harry towered over Bear because he is a long boi and Bear was all floof with short legs. https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-178272635?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
This is bull. We can't be cowed.