Trump Treasury Secretary Blasts Wall Street Journal’s ‘Grumpy Old Men’ For Opposing Trump On Economy

SEC. BESSENT: WSJ Editorial can’t stand the President’s policies. Everything they have stood for is crumbling. — Jameson Greer is going in with a machete. October delivered the smallest U.S. trade deficit since 2009, driven by exports.

Sec. Bessent says the Media’s focus on… pic.twitter.com/g4oRr4KhBl

— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) January 10, 2026

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blasted the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board as a “bunch of grumpy old men” who can’t admit they were “fantastically wrong” about President Donald Trump’s economy.

Bessent joined Steve Bannon on Bannon’s War Room this week where Bannon singled out The Wall Street Journal and its editorial board’s op-eds on Trump.

“Are they looking at a different set of numbers because they’ve been consistently, I think, negative on everything that’s happening,” Bannon said.

Bessent argued that critics of Trump’s widespread tariffs are not factoring in the massive trade deals the president has made. He accused The Wall Street Journal of jumping to “doomsday scenarios” by focusing on “outliers in the data.”

“They just immediately gravitate to this doomsday scenario because The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board can’t stand the president’s policies, a bunch of grumpy old men over there do not want to admit that they have been fantastically wrong, everything that they have stood for is crumbling, [and] that they created this terrible trade situation” he said.

Bessent continued:

In October, we had the best trade number, the smallest trade deficits since 2009. I’ve been in the investment business 35, 40 years. When I first started, 1980s, 1990s, trade used to contribute to GDP. But then we got to these massive trade deficits and it was, as Ross Perot said, it was a giant sucking sound. So everyone was, “oh my gosh, what is — it was unexpected that the GDP was so strong in October.” It was strong because of exports. And again, what’s not going reported anywhere is that the trade deals that President Trump has done and Jamieson Greer has negotiated the details in a magnificent way, magnificent way. The headline is always the tariff. The US has put a 15% tariff on Europe, 15% on Japan, 18%, 19%, 20% on Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam. The other side of that ledger, Steve, is why we saw that big GDP number, because Jameson is going in with a machete.

Watch above via Bannon’s War Room.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!