Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent criticized The New York Times on Wednesday during the outlet’s own DealBook Summit, pushing back on its reporting about President Donald Trump’s health while contrasting it with the paper’s approach to Joe Biden.
The Times published a story titled “Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities Of Aging in Office,” which suggested the public had seen less of Trump and claimed he showed signs of mental decline.
Addressing that reporting, Bessent told Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin that the outlet questioned Trump’s ability to serve but did not focus on Biden’s mental capacity during his presidency.
“You had what was one of the greatest scandals of all time, that the coverage of the Biden administration, Joe Biden’s diminished capacity, and the cover up. And that’s why it’s probably fair to raise these questions. Where was the New York Times? We just had a three-hour cabinet meeting yesterday, Andrew,” Bessent said.
Bessent contrasted that meeting schedule with what he described as a lack of cabinet engagement under Biden.
“For ten months, the Biden administration did not have a cabinet meeting,” he said.
“How are you going to invoke the 25th Amendment if the cabinet secretaries never see the president, which they didn’t? I hear from people in the Treasury Building that I see President Trump more in a day than my predecessor saw Joe Biden in half a year.”
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Concerns about Biden’s mental acuity surfaced repeatedly during his presidency, including in March 2021 when The New York Times published the headline, “Biden ‘Doing 100 Percent Fine’ After Tripping While Boarding Air Force One.”
Video from that day showed Biden falling forward on the steps of the plane and appearing to lose his balance again before landing on his left knee.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the Times’ more recent reporting during a Monday briefing, saying the outlet’s description of Trump’s fitness for office was not consistent with the access reporters have had to the president.
“Oh, same outlet, same reporter who wrote that President Trump is not fit for the job. Are you kidding me? You all see him almost every single day. He is the most accessible president in history,” Leavitt said.
The White House released the results of Trump’s magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in October.
The findings stated that the 79-year-old president’s cardiovascular and abdominal systems are in good health.
Media outlets regularly dismissed questions about Biden’s mental capacity during his presidency, often referring to those concerns as partisan attacks.
That dynamic shifted after the June 27, 2024, debate between Biden and Trump, during which Biden appeared confused at points and spoke with a raspy voice.
