Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on the October 3 installment of The Axios Show that President Donald Trump told him that he’s breaking the hearts of First Lady Melania Trump’s friends when they ask to be introduced to him and are then informed that he’s gay.
“He’ll occasionally tell me: ‘You’re breaking Melania’s friends’ hearts. They see you on TV, and they want an intro, and we have to break the news to them,’” the married 64-year-old said. Bessent is married to former prosecutor John Freeman, and the couple has two children: their son, Cole, and daughter, Caroline.
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Bessent doesn’t often publicly mention his husband, but he told Yale Alumni Magazine, “If you had told me in 1984 when we graduated, and people were dying of AIDS, that 30 years later I’d be legally married and we would have two children via surrogacy, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
During the Axios interview, Bessent said that he decided against attending the US Naval Academy as a teenager in 1979 because he was gay. He also said he didn’t think that his sexuality held him back in his financial career and said that the president isn’t bothered by his sexual orientation, adding, “I think that’s one of the reasons we have such a great team.”
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During his 2025 Senate confirmation hearing, Bessent said, “I sit here knowing that President Trump chose me because he believes I’m the best candidate, not because of my sexual preference, not because treasury secretaries with green eyes do better. And I think it is a tribute to President Trump that he looks at people as people.”
Bessent once donated to Democratic presidential campaigns but began donating to Trump’s after the 2016 election. He became a major fundraiser and an economic adviser during Trump’s 2024 campaign and nominated as treasury secretary after Trump’s second election victory.
Bessent has since proven a regular defender of Trump. In February, he spent four hours in the Senate smugly defending Trump’s corruption and failures. He defended Trump’s recent ban of mainstream journalists from covering the White House and compared Trump’s critics to a serial killer. Last March, he defended Trump’s social media post celebrating the death of former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Last October, Bessent compared the murder of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk to the September 11 terrorist attacks, which killed almost 3,000 Americans. Bessent himself claimed that he was the subject of an assassination attempt by an “addled left-wing activist” two hours after being sworn into his Cabinet role.
Last November, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) accused Bessent of hiding vital financial information about deceased child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplices and crimes. Early into his cabinet position, Bessent was called out for trying to remove sexual orientation and gender identity from a list of protected categories on certain forms about workplace discrimination.
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