The scene was described to me by one eyewitness and four other people familiar with what happened. The only fact they disagreed on was whether it was Bessent or Pulte who initiated the conversation. They and others who described the conflict were granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

Pulte appeared stunned, and the tense encounter prompted club co-owner and financier Omeed Malik to intervene, according to the three people. But Bessent wasn’t having it — he sought to get him kicked out, the eyewitness said.

“It’s either me or him,” Bessent said to Malik. “You tell me who’s getting the fuck out of here.”

“Or,” he added, “we could go outside.”

“To do what?” asked Pulte. “To talk?”

“No,” Bessent replied. “I’m going to fucking beat your ass.”

Seeking to deescalate the situation, Malik separated the men, walking Bessent to another part of the club to calm down. During the seated dinner, Bessent and Pulte were placed on opposite ends of the table, and the party went off without further episode.

Bessent, Pulte, Malik and the White House declined to comment.

The confrontation — which one Trump insider called “bonkers” and another called “unhinged” — underscores the surprising tensions between top Trump officials tasked with working on the nation’s most sensitive economic matters.

Trump announced in May that Bessent, Lutnick and Pulte would collaborate on a plan to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal housing finance organs Pulte oversees. In recent weeks, Pulte has taken the lead on an initiative that could put as much as 15 percent of Fannie and Freddie on the public markets.

But behind the scenes, the two men have clashed in something of a turf war over the mortgage giants as well as other economic matters, four Trump insiders told me. Bessent believes, some of the people familiar with their conflict say, that Pulte has inserted himself into matters the secretary views as his jurisdiction. Pulte, they add, has bristled at the threat of being bigfooted.

Complicating the entire dynamic, according to Trump administration allies closely following the drama, is Pulte’s close ties to Lutnick. The Commerce secretary and Bessent have had a rocky relationship since the transition, when the two men competed for the Treasury position. That has injected significant distrust into anything the trio work on together.

It was why Bessent — who feels he doesn’t have time for drama and backbiting given his massive portfolio, according to the person close to him — hit the roof when he saw Pulte Wednesday.

Both men enjoy close relationships with Trump and are known within the president’s orbit to openly jockey for influence and power — albeit in different ways.

Bessent, who comes across publicly as soft-spoken, has won Trump’s trust as a “soothing” presence for jittery markets amid the president’s unpredictable plays on tariffs and other economic issues. A cautious operator who’s been called a “moderating influence” on the administration, the billionaire former hedge fund manager has overcome his past association with Democratic megadonor George Soros and is now considered one of Trump’s closest allies.

Meanwhile, Pulte — a brash 37-year-old with 3 million X followers — has taken a more pugnacious tack in his lower-profile job. The scion of a family that made a fortune building homes, he quickly fired more than 100 Fannie and Freddie staffers as he took direct control of the key housing finance entities — often rolling out new initiatives on X.

In recent weeks his stock in the White House and in the MAGA universe more broadly has risen as he has used his post to launch mortgage-related investigations into several of the president’s critics. His efforts to target Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook — alleging she sought mortgages for multiple “primary” residences — have redoubled pressure on the Fed as Trump presses for lower interest rates.

Trump moved to fire Cook, a Joe Biden appointee, last month. She has called the allegations unsubstantiated and is suing to challenge her ouster. The case is pending.

Relatedly, Bessent and Pulte have been on opposite sides of the debate about whether Trump should fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Bessent, as my colleagues Megan Messerly and Victoria Guida scooped earlier this year, had privately cautioned that such a decapitation would destabilize financial markets.

Pulte, on the other hand, has repeatedly called on Powell to resign and has taken the position that Trump has the power to fire the chair for cause based on his alleged mismanagement of costly Fed headquarters renovations. Pulte even gave Trump a draft letter firing Powell, the Washington Post reported in July.

Wednesday’s dustup also wasn’t the first time Bessent has gotten into an altercation with a fellow Trump official. In April, he confronted Elon Musk just outside the Oval Office, accusing the tech mogul — then running his Department of Government Efficiency initiative — in a profanity-laden tirade of going behind his back to secure his chosen candidate, Gary Shapley, as acting IRS commissioner.

Bessent was pushing for another man, Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender, to get the job — and eventually got his way. Faulkender left the department late last month after just five months on the job.

>>1433026
>Both men enjoy close relationships with Trump and are known within the president’s orbit to openly jockey for influence and power
>a dramatic clash between two of Trump’s top economic officials, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at one point threatening to punch top housing finance official Bill Pulte “in the fucking face.”
>not a year in and the cracks are showing
And so it begins...

This is nothing the founders had first fights to settle disputes on the Senate floor. We need to bring that back. It would get the geriatrics out fast

>>1433030
Personally, I think the Sergeant at Arms should be able to beat them with the ceremonial mace when they're being retarded. As is all they can do is hold it up like it's a magic stick and hope they even notice it waving around and care enough to calm down.

>>1433030
Yeah but back then they weren't jockeying over who can get noticed by the orange man in chief the most so they can enact their billionaire agendas.

>>1433039
Didn't Kamala spend a billion dollars more than Trump for the election?

>>1433043
How many billionaires did Biden have in his administration? Trump has 13.

>>1433044
What is your point?
>Billionaires bad
Reminder that Biden was trying to tax unrealized capital gains to destroy middle class investments and 401ks

>>1433049
>>Billionaires bad
Yes anon, true.

>>1433049
>Trying to tax capital gains
If you want to tax billionaires, capital gains tax is the way. The capital gains loophole is largely why billionaires pay an effective lower tax rate.
>Destroying middle class investments
If you don't want your capital gains taxed, get a Roth IRA lol. If you're squirreling away more than the annual limit you can afford to pay the extra taxes.

It feels a bit silly to have a conversation about hypothetical taxes when I'm already getting fucked up the ass with tariffs.

>>1433071
It's also funny when they keep saying "inflation is so low!" when the tariffs have jacked up the price of some things by 150%. This when they were frothing at the mouth over a 10% increase during Biden's term.

>>1433094
I love the disconnect between Trump's personal rantings and the general Republican damage control.

You ask Republicans about the economy, they'll answer "Well we're gonna need to deal with some temporary issues but we'll come out of it better than ever. Short term pain, long term gain. It'll get better and then it'll be better than it was before."

You ask Trump (or Republicans while Trump is in the room), he'll say "Oh the economy is already great. We're doing great. Everything is great and it'll be even better soon!"

>>1433097
Yeah and they keep giving figures for how much the tariffs will bring over a 10 year period, as if they and the tariffs are going to be around for that long.

>>1433101
Not to mention how much it'll cost the American people in that time. The plan for prices to come down for them basically boils down to "Hope companies are retarded enough to move here even though the tariffs on materials would cost 90% of them more than the tariff fee, and the remaining 10% would still lose more on the countertariffs other countries place on US goods"

>>1433101
Or as if any American is going to see that money in any meaningful way. The unrealistic best case scenario is that it kinda offsets some of the permanent tax cuts for the ultrawealthy and their corporations, but they talk about it as if they're going to personally cut you a check from the huge pile of money paid by foreign governments.

>>1433105
Republicans are literally asking the US populace to accept universally higher prices in day to day life to justify bettering a number that barely affects any of them. They're almost definitely not gonna see the benefits of the US getting tariff income, but they're sure as hell gonna see the downsides.

>>1433049
>middle class investments
They used to get pensions but republicans phased those out over the last 25 years.

>>1433106
>They're almost definitely not gonna see the benefits of the US getting tariff income
Call it what it really is: a tax on consumers. Whatever benefits there are will be more than canceled out by the negative effects such as a huge drop in consumer spending and purchasing power, credit defaults and massive increases in income inequality.

>>1433049
>>1433053
A question for a certain antisemitic anon clearly seething at prices of imported RTX 5090s because of tariffs: >>1433203
Are the billionaires who own a member of the Trillion Dollar Company Club, NVidia - which heavily invested in Vietnam way before late last year - good or bad? Choose wisely, that anon, especially as Trump loves Jews, and he loves wealth as much as they do.
Enjoy your paradox, that anon.

>>1433301
Cool false dichotomy anon.

>>1433303
>Cool true paradox for >>1433203
ftfy

>>1433301
Denounce the talmud, kike. Otherwise, we're not having a discussion and you have proven yourself to be a shill

>>1433043
i doubt all the foreign trump shills were factored in so that number is quite dubious

>>1433319
It doesn't count dark money and he knows that.

oh no, 1433318 the called-out MAGA shill is caught in a paradoxical loop due to a refusal to denounce the wealth-loving Trump who in turn refuses to denounce Jews & Israel

>>1433301
I don't know why you so mad I made a post calling out nvidia on their price gouging when it's a common complaint about them for years at this point.

>2 faggots fighting .gif

>Nvidia are jews
>jews
>Denounce the talmud, kike
>kike
uh oh, 1433347 the antisemitic ad hominem-relying projectionist is mad

>>1433359
It's a bot

oh no, 1433368 the bot is projecting

>>1433359
>>1433368
They will never denounce the talmud

Chamath Palihapitiya

That doesn't sound American.

>>1433390
The podcast is called "All In". If you search for it with his name you can see the kinds of batshit insanity they talk about.

>>1433375 will never denounce the Talmud-praising Trump

>>1433375
The talmud is simply jews talking about the old testament of the bible. Why would I denounce the old testament?

oh look, 1433375 is deflecting

Why is the GOP so violent?