Scott Bessent criticized Sen. Elizabeth Warren over what he described as repeated economic errors in letters from her office, while also mocking the Massachusetts Democrat over her past claims of Indigenous ancestry.

During an exchange with Griff Jenkins and Rachel Campos-Duffy, Bessent accused Warren of leaking correspondence to the media before his office even receives it and said her letters have repeatedly contained basic misunderstandings of financial policy.

"Senator Warren loves to write letters more than writing the letters. She loves to leak them to the press. That I read about the letter on Bloomberg and Politico before we received it, and a lot of these letters are embarrassing. And Rachel, as you said, economically illiterate. I can't remember whether it was 1,2,3,4 letters ago; she confused a currency swap with a currency intervention. Then she accused us of doing a bond market intervention. We've been doing it since 2024, and the shocking thing here: she is the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, and she is on Senate Finance. So, like this level of illiteracy, whether it's her or her staff, is woeful. And you know, look, I, you know, I wish her Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, and to her, to her and her family, maybe given some of the past claims she's made."

Jenkins responded with a joke about how Bessent should communicate with Warren.

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"Maybe the problem is that you keep trying to exchange letters with her, and you should be doing smoke signals, and then she would be able to understand it."

Bessent then turned his criticism toward legacy media organizations, saying he was surprised reporters had not challenged Warren or her staff over the issues he raised.

"Well, I'll tell you the other shocking thing: not a single legacy media outlet has called her out on this. No one has said, like, what is going on in the senior senator from Massachusetts' office? What do they do all day? Do they like do they sit around and like, you know sip herbal tea and think about raising taxes?"

Campos-Duffy added a brief joke of her own.

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"Or smoke a tobacco pipe."

The conversation then returned to a handwritten message Bessent had added to a letter that was later publicized by their colleague Edward Lawrence.

Jenkins asked how the note came to be added.

"I got to quickly get this in, though, because our colleague Edward Lawrence broke the news and put out the letter that you had sent back with the handwritten part that said, 'Happy Indigenous Peoples Day. You put that there. So, how did this go down, Mr. Secretary? Was it they gave you the letter, said, "Okay, boss, I think we've got the draft you wanted, right. You said, "No, no, no, no. Hold on. Let me add something."

Bessent said adding handwritten notes is something he commonly does with his letters and explained that the Indigenous Peoples Day reference was aimed at Warren’s past claims about her family heritage.

"Well, I always, with my letters, like to add a handwritten note at the end, and you know, given what I think everyone on this set calls Columbus Day, and look, I've got high cheekbones. All three of you have got high cheekbones. Doesn't make us indigenous people, but that somehow became the Warren family legacy."

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The exchange combined Bessent’s substantive criticism of Warren’s understanding of financial policy with a more personal swipe at one of the controversies that has followed her for years.

Bessent’s central argument was that Warren’s office has repeatedly confused major economic concepts despite her senior position on committees responsible for banking and finance. He also faulted the media for failing, in his view, to scrutinize those mistakes more aggressively.

The handwritten note became the lighter part of the exchange, but Bessent made clear that it was intentional. Rather than distancing himself from the message after it became public, he doubled down on the joke and tied it directly to Warren’s past ancestry claims.

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