Bessent demands apology from Summers over 'big, beautiful bill' criticism

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent late Sunday fired back at Larry Summers for the former Treasury secretary's criticism of President Trump’s massive tax and spending legislation.

In a thread on social platform X, Bessent demanded an apology from Summers for comparing the deaths that some estimates predict will result from the health care cuts in the bill to the fatalities that were reported after the catastrophic flooding in central Texas.

“Today, former Treasury Secretary @LHSummers showed why he was forced to step down as president of @Harvard: a lack of humanity and judgment,” Bessent wrote in a post on the social platform.

He condemned Summers’s “shockingly callous interview” on ABC News’s “This Week” Sunday, during which Summers cited the Yale Budget Lab estimate saying the bill “will kill, over 10 years, 100,000 people.”

“That is 2,000 days of death like we've seen in Texas this weekend,” Summers added in the interview. “In my 70 years, I’ve never been as embarrassed for my country on July Fourth.”

Trump signed his agenda-setting legislation into law on July 4, the same day Texas experienced catastrophic flooding that has killed almost 90 people — a death toll that experts say is expected to rise.

Bessent condemned the remarks and called for an apology.

“Using the horrifying situation in Texas for cheap political gain is unfathomable,” Bessent added in his thread. “He has turned a human tragedy into a political cudgel. Such remarks are feckless and deeply offensive.”

“Professor Summers should immediately issue a public apology for his toxic language,” Bessent said, urging institutions affiliated with Summers to “join me in this call.”

“If he is unwilling or unable to acknowledge the cruelty of his remarks, they should consider Harvard's example and make his unacceptable rhetoric grounds for dismissal,” Bessent added.

The Hill has reached out to Summers for comment.

Bessent’s remarks come after Summers, in the interview, railed against the president’s legacy-defining legislation.

“There is no economist anywhere, without a strong political agenda, who is saying that this bill is a positive for the economy. And the overwhelming view is that it is probably going to make the economy worse,” Summers said in the interview Sunday.

“Think about it this way,” he continued. “How long can the world’s greatest debtor remain the world’s greatest power? And this is piling more debt onto the economy than any piece of tax legislation in dollar terms that we have ever had.”