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Transcript of Scott Bessent Interview: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

The following is the full transcript of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s interview on The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe, #494, July 16, 2026.

Editor’s Note: In this episode of The Way I Heard It, Mike Rowe sits down with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at the Reagan Library to discuss the current state of the American economy and the importance of rebuilding domestic industrial capacity. The conversation covers a wide range of topics, including the administration’s approach to balancing AI innovation with safety, efforts to reinvigorate the trades, and the introduction of “Trump Accounts” designed to foster financial literacy and long-term investment for children. Throughout the interview, Bessent emphasizes a vision of an “awakened” America that is actively working to secure its supply chains and restore the American dream for all citizens.

Innovation, Imitation, and American Strength

MIKE ROWE: I sure appreciate you making the time.

SCOTT BESSENT: Glad to do it.

MIKE ROWE: Are you really? Because I’ve been to these things before and everybody is pulling you in every direction at the same time. They all want to tell you a story and they all want to thank you and congratulate you for this, that, or the other. It’s got to be exhausting.

SCOTT BESSENT: I tell you, it’s exhilarating being here at the Reagan Library. I was 18 when I met Ronald Reagan. Just where’d you meet him? Next to the Yale campus. Only 5 of us went to see him speak when he was candidate Reagan. I shook his hand and he was the first presidential candidate I ever voted for. So it reminds me of my youth and just the photos of him and the First Lady are so hopeful.

At the Reagan Library

MIKE ROWE: Oh my gosh, it’s amazing. Have you been through the ranch before? I assume you’ve been up there.

SCOTT BESSENT: Once. Once.

MIKE ROWE: It is so stunning. I mean, it’s so shockingly modest. People don’t believe it. You know, that little single tiny bed and the— it’s all extraordinary.

SCOTT BESSENT: Well, it’s an incredible American story. I’m sure a lot of your viewers know, but his nickname was Dutch because he used to get a Dutch boy haircut with a bowl because they did it at home. And then he was in the White House and one of the most transformative presidents in history.

MIKE ROWE: Well, I’ve been to a few presidential libraries. This wins partly because of that, but it’s just mostly because you can just, just walking through it, you can still get a sense of the guy and a sense of the footprint he left.

SCOTT BESSENT: Well, I mean, it was so consequential when you look at whether bringing down the Iron Curtain and just bringing America back.

While America Slept: The Keynote Speech

MIKE ROWE: You were on the TV when I fell asleep last night. You were on it when I woke up this morning. You were here when I showed up. What is happening? I mean, are you on a kind of tour of sorts?

SCOTT BESSENT: No. Well, I’m out here for this keynote speech here at the library, which was called “While America Slept.” We printed away our sovereignty and our industrial capacity for about 25 years. We’re bringing that back. I did do the weekly White House press conference yesterday, which was fun. There are a bunch of animals there in the press club.

MIKE ROWE: Okay, okay. Hey, he said it. No, but it was really going to be one of my first questions. When you’re standing there and the press is all clearly so eager, maybe even desperate to ask a question, are you actually calling on them? Does the loudest question get your attention?

SCOTT BESSENT: No, no, no, no. Well, first of all, I walked out and 3 weeks ago, I went back to my home state in South Carolina. University of South Carolina gave me an honorary PhD. So I walked out and I said, “If you want to get called on, you got to call me Dr. Bessent.”

MIKE ROWE: And it worked.

SCOTT BESSENT: And it worked. So whoever yelled “Dr. Bessent” the loudest, I just went kind of symmetrically through the crowd.

Addressing American Concerns: Markets, Media, and the Economy

MIKE ROWE: Well, let’s just jump into what’s most important to you right now. I know you’ve been talking about the Trump accounts. You’ve said a lot of things that I think are really relevant to my audience, which is kind of eclectic. But there are a lot of people — they’re concerned about AI, they’re concerned about the market, they’re concerned about not being in the market. They’re just concerned.

SCOTT BESSENT: They’re concerned.

MIKE ROWE: Yeah. So how do we mitigate that concern?

SCOTT BESSENT: Well, someone said to me, “Are you surprised the market’s going up on bad news?” And I said, well, it’s that the news is bad — that the quality of the news that people get is bad — that whether it’s newspapers or the television, that people now present opinion as news.

And I have perfectly asymmetric information on what’s going on with the Iran conflict. We’re kicking their butts. But if you were to read, if you were to listen to some of these crazed Democrats, if you were to read the front page of the New York Times, you wouldn’t get that. So I’m not surprised by what’s happening, but I can understand how it causes anxiety in the American people.

And look, I was in the investment business for 35, 40 years. To the extent that I had success, it was looking on the other side of things, thinking about the medium to long term, the saying, “This too shall pass.” That this conflict will end, that gasoline prices will go down.

But I don’t know if you remember last year — it was eggs, eggs, eggs.