And there's already been some infighting behind the scenes and jockeying between different potential candidates. At one point, during what the sources described as a massive blowup, Musk accused Epstein of leaking details of Trump's transition, including a personnel picks to the media. [00:00:16] Epstein responded by telling Musk that he didn't know what he was talking about. This comes amid new reports that Musk is also becoming a source of infighting in the Trump transition team, surrounding the choice for Treasury secretary. Well, at the very center of that infighting is the battle for who Donald Trump will choose to be his treasury secretary. [00:00:36] And there is some significant disagreement between Elon Musk and others who are involved in Trump's transition process. Now, initially, as we had reported earlier, Donald Trump was considering two specific individuals for the role. That includes Howard Lutnick, who is the CEO of Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald. [00:00:55] That is the individual who is in charge of Trump's transition. And it appears that is the individual that Elon Musk would like Trump to choose as Treasury secretary. The other individual is Scott Bessant, who's the founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital. [00:01:10] And he's also a former money manager for George Soros. But apparently Trump has actually soured on both of these individuals and is now looking to interview other contenders at Mar-A-Lago. This week, Lutnick, who has been running Trump's transition operation, [00:01:26] has gotten on Trump's nerves lately. Trump has privately expressed frustration that Mr. Lutnick has been hanging around him too much, and that he has been manipulating the transition process for his own ends. Now, look, this is an anonymous source who spoke to the New York Times. [00:01:41] I don't know how real this is. What I do know is that if you're in charge of the transition process and you have to manage the transition process, yeah, there's a lot of leadership that goes into that. So if Trump is in fact annoyed by him, I'm curious what kind of manipulation [00:01:58] he's referring to. But with that in mind, a person familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity described the battle between Letnick and Bessant as a knife fight, with Letnick as the primary aggressor, and as for Bessant, he is being considered. [00:02:17] He's still being considered for the role, but he could also be chosen by Trump to lead a different government agency, maybe the leader of the National Economic Council? We don't know yet, but what's interesting is Elon Musk's role in this entire so-called knife fight, [00:02:32] because Musk is not a fan of Bessant, he calls him business as usual, and he's not in favor of Trump choosing him. He posted on X, writing would be interesting to hear more people weigh in on this for Donald Trump to consider feedback. [00:02:49] My view is that Bessant is a business as usual choice, whereas Howard Lutnick will actually enact change. Business as usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need to change one way or another. These are two incredibly wealthy Wall Street guys. [00:03:06] I'm I mean, I'm very curious why he favors Lutnick so much more, because I see them as very similar. Go ahead. Yeah, I have theories. So first of all, you should check out the interview I did that we put up on [00:03:23] Young Turks on YouTube over the weekend. Tim Newell is CEO of aspiration. Aspiration is a great company. One of our sponsors, but he worked with Elon Musk at Tesla and SolarCity, and that's why I want to talk to him. And he said, we all knew you people would go into meetings with Elon Musk, but [00:03:41] we didn't know who was coming out like so. Elon Musk is not a guy who is overly kind and caring when it comes to getting him. Like to be like the most generous interpretation to Elon Musk is to get the job done right. [00:03:57] So he's no nonsense, period. And he fires people at great velocity, okay. And everybody knows this because of what he did at Twitter. So when he and he's being the richest man in the world and the CEO of all those major companies. [00:04:13] He's not used to people debating him. Right. And Tim also talked about that. There were a lot of debates. Okay, you do this and you do it lightning quick. Otherwise I fire you. Is his modus operandi, right? So so when he has to deal with Boris Epstein. [00:04:30] Right. And you remember, he's the guy that in 2016 was doing like a podcast or something I do for Trump. And he yelled ceremonies like, that's him, right. So he's but he's been loyal to Trump all along. Does he have his own agenda? Of course. Right. Has he been leaking to the press, as Elon Musk is suggesting? [00:04:48] I'd be surprised if he wasn't. They almost all do. Right. So, so of course that clash is coming. That clash is inevitable based just on personalities alone and Elon always getting what he wants. Right. But with Trump in the room you can't always get what you want. [00:05:04] And so this is going to be something that's going to keep on happening. Okay. Now to the substance of the Treasury picks. You could tell. First of all, as soon as I knew that Musk was on my side. My educated guess was that Lutnick is in favor of Bitcoin [00:05:21] and crypto and all that stuff. And in just the pictures we were showing you, he was shown speaking at a Bitcoin conference and convention. Right. So because Elon has a plan I don't know what it is with crypto. And he cares a lot about it. [00:05:37] And it's not an accident that he called his whatever the hell government organization. That's that Trump is going to create for him Doge. And that's, you know, named after his own cryptocurrency. So it's to me, I would be shocked if Lutnick didn't do whatever Musk wanted [00:05:53] on crypto, but apparently maybe Bessent won't necessarily do that now. What is what they have in common is Donald Trump is not going to pick one of the poors to be his secretary of treasury. No he doesn't. In fact, he said that in his first term, he said, I don't want people [00:06:10] that are poor in my cabinet. I don't want I only want rich because they're successful. No, he's. Made that clear in this upcoming cabinet. In fact, and for whatever reason, he's eyeing various Wall Street billionaires for these roles. And yeah, you're right, he sees their success on Wall Street [00:06:28] as like one of the main reasons why he would want them to serve in his cabinet and in particular in the Treasury role. And so there are two other individuals that he's considering that I want to talk a little bit about, because The New York Times is reporting that the president elect is impressed with [00:06:45] billionaire Mark Rosen, another individual who has close ties to Wall Street. He's the chief executive and co-founder of Apollo Global Management. But this is my favorite. This is my absolute favorite. Trump has also remarked that Kevin Warsh is smart and handsome. [00:07:02] Oh, Joe, that's what we need in a Treasury secretary, a good looking fella. Obviously that made me want to look him up and see if he's hot. And you know what? He's fine. I will allow it. Oh, it's all right. But yeah, I get maybe he looks better. [00:07:18] Anyway, Who cares? Who cares? But Trump is like, is that a central casting? Okay, so guys, why does Trump want billionaire Wall Street guys as his treasury secretary when he was a populist? Because he's always wanted to be in the club. [00:07:34] The two reasons that's the first. And so those guys run the club. Cantor Fitzgerald, Apollo management. By the way, notice that this is a former money manager for George Soros. Now, I don't have a problem with that, but I heard the right wing has a problem with that, right? Right, exactly. [00:07:49] So, so. But all these guys are the same. - Exactly. - Yeah. There's no difference between them other than maybe how much they're going to let Elon do crypto scams or whatever. Right. But for Trump, he wants to be in the club. So he's like, yay, I get to pick one of the Wall Street. [00:08:05] Oh no, they're going to come kiss my ass. Who's in the club now, bitches? But didn't he pick a Wall Street billionaire last time around? How did that work out for him? Well, he perfectly fine. You know why? Because he did giant corporate tax cuts. Just added 40% to our debt. And then all those guys then gave him more money this time around [00:08:23] and he won reelection. So I mean, it's screwed over the country. A $2 trillion went straight to corporate coffers and out of our pockets, in essence, over the long run. But it worked out great for Trump. So he's going to do it again. He's going to do another corporate tax cut. That's why he's bringing the guys who would benefit most from that. [00:08:39] But there's a second reason why. The second reason is once he's out of office, you're going to want a couple of billionaire friends who might help you out from time to time. Right. So whoever the Treasury secretary is, they're going to be 100% in favor [00:08:55] of a corporate robbery of this country. And that's exactly what they'll execute. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. 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