Secretary Bessent on The Axios Show

It's kind of like Hannibal Lecter, stop me before I kill again. Sometimes I feel like an emergency room doctor. The American people were backed over by the inflation mack truck. I would say that I stand my ground like Alexander Hamilton, fired if fired upon. Scott Besson, 79th Treasury Secretary, proud South Carolina, once known as Wall Street's quiet killer for your deal-making chops. Secretary Besson, welcome to the Axios Show. Great to be with you. Thanks for having us into the cash room. I understand there used to be literal cash in these vaults. There used to be cash in these vaults. And at one point, the inauguration ball was in here. So Treasury is a great building. We've got three museum offices. So we've got Salman Chase's office. He financed the Civil War. I used to say for the Union, but I was corrected and said for the United States of America, which allowed Abraham Lincoln to win against the Confederacy. We have the Johnson Suite, where President Johnson actually worked after President Lincoln was assassinated because he wanted to give Mary Lincoln 30 days to move out of the White House. And then we have the Treasurer's office, which also has vaults in it. Very neat. So, Mr. Secretary, I want to have a real conversation. I'm going to be blunt. I won't bullshit you. Please don't bullshit me. Does that work? We can both pull out our BS flags. You're in charge of the economy at a time when many Americans are hurting and they blame your boss, the president. A new AP poll says 17%, fewer than 1 in 5, approve of the president's handling of the cost of living, one of the big issues that got him elected. And we spent a lot of time together on the campaign trail. What happened to the golden age? Look, I think it is there. I think it's accelerating. I think the Iran conflict is masking a lot of it. But, Mike, I can tell you what we're not going to do. Well, it's not just masking it. It's deterred it. It's held it back. Well, look, if you look at the numbers, any of the numbers are quite strong. Other than headline inflation, the numbers are very strong. Well, look at the number. Gas is $4.41 a gallon, up a buck and a quarter from a year ago. That's headline inflation. And that's what hits most Americans. But what everyone calls groceries, what do you think the inflation rate is? Economists call it food at home. 2.2%, right back down to where it had been. But what we're not going to do is do what the Biden people did, or tell the American people how good they had it. I understand. Sometimes I feel like an emergency room doctor, that the American people were backed over by the inflation mack truck. 21.5% inflation and at least negative 4% real wage gains. But they feel like they're still in the hospital. Two weeks ago, Wall Street Journal, weeks before the midterms, almost everything is getting more expensive. Last weekend, Wall Street Journal, the cost of transporting pretty much everything just won't stop going up. Well, again, I'm not going to speak to the veracity of the journal. How much is everything going up? Over time, prices go up. The Fed wants them to go up about 2%. But Mike, to come back. So you are saying that people are better off than they feel? I am saying that there is the stated preference and revealed preference. So I was just with the largest banks in America. I had the two major credit card companies come in last week. And what we're seeing is spending is quite strong, especially for we have seen for the bottom two quintiles of wage earners. If anything, the spending is coming down for the top quintile. And one of the largest banks in America told me we can see working Americans putting more into their accounts every week from wages. So you're seeing light at the end of the tunnel? What I'm saying is we are seeing substantial wage increases, 3.5, 3.7% median wage increase. And that's about in line with headline inflation. And the difference here is breaking even after what happened during the Biden years is not our goal. But what will happen, we will get to the other side of this Iran conflict. I think oil is going to be more well supplied. I think we're going to be much lower. Wage gains will keep coming because we are having a manufacturing renaissance. We are seeing the job gains go to Americans. We're seeing private sector jobs this time other than government jobs. Private sector jobs are what drive wage increases. And the energy shock will fade away. You became the economic face of the war with Economic Fury, as you branded, and Operation Economic Outcast. That has made your job a lot harder and made the chessboard you operate with much more difficult. So Secretary Mnuchin and I went to school together. We've known each other since we were 17. He kindly invited me out before I took this job. And he said, what is going to surprise you the most is the amount of national security in the job. And it did. But now with the Iranian operation, it's really expanded. And, you know, I'll tell you that what we've had is a very strong sequencing in this Iran conflict. So six weeks of kinetic conflict, and none would have been possible without the other. Six weeks of... But you were hoping like you would have victory right here, a shorter sequence. Well, I'm not a chess player. With chess, everything's on the board. And, you know, you can mostly predict... You have a lot more sequences than you'd like to have. No, I got called in at the end, and I'm quite optimistic about what I see. But, you know, I play backgammon, I play cards, and you got to deal with what you're dealt. Okay, all right, while we're on cards. But what I want to say is that we had kinetic, we destroyed their navy, their air force, substantially depleted their drone and missile capability, destroyed their chances of rebuilding that. Then we went to what the president calls the iron wall and the blockade, which we've never done before. And now we have Operation Economic Outcast, and we are isolating them economically like it's never happened before. You know, right now, the score, in terms of barrels out of the street, U.S., about 1.1 billion, around zero. For the first time in history, since they started pumping oil, they will have no oil on the water this week. They will have no revenues. A real issue for the treasury secretary is how much of America's market gains and capital demand are all driven by the AI buildout. Are we in a bubble? Some people would say it's the other way around. Some people would say, well, rates are high because of the capital demand from AI. And look, I think that this is the generational, or it's something we saw the internet, in my lifetime, we saw the internet boom during the 90s, and the office modernization before that, probably electrification before that, the railroads before that, the canals. No, we don't have to be in a bubble. There's a substantial amount of capital going in. So we don't have to be, are you afraid we are, or you think we're not? Well, I think what tells me that we're not is what is different this time than the 90s is we are seeing the so-called hyperscalers. We are seeing the most smartest and most successful people and the most cash-rich companies, probably in the history of the world, they are willing to use their own money, their own balance sheets to invest in this. Microsoft, Google, Manhattan. This is not the speculative pets.com that we had in the 90s. These are serious companies with serious business models. And for both the Frontier Labs, Anthropic and OpenAI, we've never seen revenue growth like this. Thank you for watching The Axios Show. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. Second, okay? For James? Yeah, thank you. Long flight. Yeah. I just interviewed Larry Fink, who you know very well, the CEO of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager. He told me it's inevitable that something big and bad is going to happen because of AI. He says adversity accelerates innovation. What are you most worried about from AI? Look, I think that one of the things I was worried about, well, two things. One, we cannot lose our lead to the Chinese. So one of the portfolios that I also have is, you know, I managed the US-China relationship. And I can tell you that it would be very different if they had the lead in AI rather than us, both from a capability point of view, how they would be using it. But more importantly, their willingness to discuss it. So my counterpart, the vice premier, and I had a very good discussion. It's going to lead to more discussions in October or November. And we have a substantial lead. They're second. And then everyone else is way behind. But a lot of these Chinese models are very powerful, not as powerful as the US models, but you get something that's 80, 90% powerful without guardrails that can be imported anywhere in the world. So the vice premier and I talked about three areas of safety concern. So it would be uncontrolled agents, non-state actors with cyber or biologics. Are you going to re-raise the idea that was floated of having some sort of communication between the two superpowers? Yeah, sure. We'll see. What are you going to propose? We have some kind of a notification process. And do you think he'll go for that? I think so. I think that they, over the past 60 days, have woken up to... I think that they didn't realize how powerful their open source models are. So the open source models, they do industrial distillation, which is a nice word for stealing, from the US models. Some of their models, one of their very powerful models is Kimmy. Kimmy thinks she is Claude. Like Kimmy will tell you she is Claude sometimes. It's public, so I can talk about it. Kimmy sent back, very helpful, Kimmy sent back some PLA weapons plans to Anthropic. So I think things like that have made the Chinese realize that this is a very powerful technology. So just to button that down, you think there'll be some agreement between China and the US about a channel of communication if something goes wrong? Yes. And what about the capabilities of coming models? I think, just as your article said today, and I'm very aligned with Dan Huttenlocher at MIT who runs their AI group. I think on safety, one of the things with safety is we have to be able to assign liability. And the Professor Huttenlocher really said that it is the people at the labs who have to accept responsibility. And I agree with that. And I think the labs have come around to that way of thinking too. And last one on China. Can you see the US and China exchanging windows into the coming capabilities of each other's models? Probably not that, but I think we can agree on this is what models should not do. Rapid round on AI. How much planning is there for the day after, the day after a catastrophic cyber calamity caused by AI, that hits the financial system? So you would have seen that within days of the release of Mythos, it was coincident, but the largest bank CEOs were in DC for another meeting. I gathered them here at Treasury along- And they told you they were very worried. They were, they were. But they have the best cyber defenses outside of governments in the world. And they have done a lot together since then. We have formed something called Golden Eagle, which is a clearinghouse. They have four best practices and they can actually collaborate here at Treasury in terms of their learnings. And we are able to distribute that down the cap. So from the mega banks to the regional, super regionals to the regionals, to the small and community banks. But to get back to what Larry Fink was saying, I think what we really have to do, we are doing this hard scramble to the frontier for the models. We really need to start worrying more about resilience and defense too. How worried are you personally about the day after recovery from something where our accounts look like they have zeros or our PIN numbers don't work? Again, I think that the system is quite healthy and I would be very surprised to see something of that scale. You were one of President Trump's most knowledgeable advisors on AI. My conversations with Wall Street, Silicon Valley, they both trust you. You were floated to be the AI czar, but you have a day job. After the midterms, can you see the administration being more activist, more interventionist on AI? Well, it depends on what you mean by activist and interventionist. We want safe acceleration. Do you agree with David Sachs, the presidential advisor and Silicon investor, that worries of widespread AI harm are BS? I believe that we have to be prepared for every occasion. But on the other side, I think that this alarmism without solutions by some of the AI community, that's not leadership. Well, and it's not just some in the community, it's the CEOs are basically screaming for regulation, warning of losing control of AI. Well, then they should slow down. I mean, it's kind of like Hannibal Lecter, stop me before I kill again. It seems like you do regulate AI companies, but for whatever reason, you don't brag about it. The administration reviews all the models by the Frontier Labs weeks before the release, does order pauses if they needed. Why not brag about that and say, we're on it? Well, it's all voluntary right now, and except for one- You say right now. And that it's all voluntary, and except for one instance, it has been voluntary. So if there were something disturbing and a lab went against something that we had seen, then we would maintain the right to intervene, just as we had to do once with Anthropic Spabel. And can you see that happening again? I think that having seen that one incident, that the labs had been very cooperative, and we're seeing them- So it sounds like you think it may not be necessary to happen again. It shouldn't be. There was a boundary. It was tested. It was a successful test. And we're actually seeing open AI hold back some of their models to do more testing on a voluntary basis. Last one on AI. If existing product liability laws are good enough to police AI, why not waive all regulations on all products and just rely on that? Again, you're a very good article today. I think we're going to have to explore this in a more meaningful way. And this happens in every technological change. And just to go back to the AI doomerism, what we've actually seen is AI creating jobs. And back to Main Street, some of the great proponents of AI six, nine months ago told me, we're going to see a proliferation of small businesses due to AI. And I was like, oh, give me a break. We have. No, it's happening. We run a small company and we're growing. And so, so far, and this was not necessarily foreseeable, so far, people are growing. Do you worry, though, that that could come to a screeching halt, as my grandma would say? Well, what we're seeing, though, is like your company, you call it small, but by many standards, it's large. What I'm talking about is the advent of the one, two, three person startup, which is now enabled by AI. I also oversee the IRS. So we can see a record number of applications for tax ID numbers. I talked to one of the big payment companies and they are seeing record requests there for payment portals from small businesses. Do you think that's going to persist? Yes. So you are a super optimist as far as what AI is going to do for jobs? I think that the, I don't know if every corporation is going to hire more people, but for overall- You think net for the- Net, net for the ecosystem. Yes. What are your concerns about the possible inflationary effects of AI? Well, Mike, I actually think it's the opposite because what we're seeing right now is the build out. And I actually think over the medium and long-term, AI is going to be very disinflationary as we increase productivity. So we are, in essence, kind of making the payment upfront. We're seeing some substantial capital usage. We're seeing natural resource usage. But as we complete the build out on the other side, I think it's going to be very disinflationary. Last month, you told the markets, I am the house now. They bet against you at their peril. Do you regret saying, I am the house now? No, because look, the house doesn't win every hand. The house plays the percentages. And look, maybe they hurt some fragile egos on Wall Street that I always had respect for the market. And I always tried to look and think like, what's the move after the move? That if you have an ego, you lose a lot of money. But the market slapped back. No, it didn't. How did it slap back? Rates went up, but oil went up. I could say, okay, yesterday, we had the first full allocation since we have expanded our treasury buybacks and rates collapse. There's nothing causal there. It was coincident. The Financial Times, probably your favorite paper, said Bessant fails to break fever in U.S. bond market. What did you learn from that? Well, I learned that the Financial Times is anti-American, anti-business. And they have a fever. They're constantly trying to create a problem for the U.S. But let's leave that disgraced publication in London aside. So I think fair to say no longer your favorite paper? It never was. But they do have some excellent journalists. But what I would say is that, and again, what I've learned, that everyone in the market knows you don't win every hand, but you win over time. Everyone knows I'm a big basketball fan, big fan of John Wooten, big fan of Dean Smith. And how do they win? You trust the process and you put a good process in place. And like what we can see with bond yields, that I would be concerned if we were having some kind of idiosyncratic rise. It's been a global rise. The U.S. bond performance since President came in has been the best in the world. So we are not seeing people sell treasuries to buy German bonds or Japanese bonds. And like I said, I can't control the bond market. What I can do is try to get people to slow down and think. Because my job in the financial markets for 30 years was to be outside the door, ear to the door when policy was being made, sometimes with myself over the transom and think like what policymakers gonna do, should do, can do. And now that I'm in the room and what I meant by I in the house is that I have superior information. People could ask, obviously the Japanese would have liked for us to intervene in the yen at some point anytime since January. Why did we do it then? People should sit back and ask themselves that. Rather than, oh, we intervene in the yen. So are you prepared to step in again? Should financial markets expect a more interventionist activist treasury from now on? Again, we're not an activist treasury, but what we have done, what I have done with President Trump's blessing is we believe that economic security is national security. National security is economic security. But so you could see stepping in again? Well, let's think about what we did in Argentina. That the great US ally who had done a great series of reforms, his opposition was trying to turn the markets against him and create a financial panic going into the election. I was able to use the balance sheet of the United States of America, make money for the American people with a fully secured currency swap, central bank to central bank and the bridge President Malay during the election. And I would submit that the stabilization of Argentina has led to a sea change in Latin America, something generational or maybe first time in history that we've never had this many Latin American countries allied with the US. So could we do that again? Sure. You led the search for the new Fed chair. You've known Kevin Walsh forever. How has that relationship changed? And can it get awkward? So we had a very rigorous process. We had a group of 12 candidates. We moved that down and that down. And what I can say, it was 100% the decision of the president. I never put my thumb on the scale. We had some great candidates. And as you said, I've known Kevin for a couple of decades. And we represent two very different powerful institutions. And the Chair Walsh has talked about that maybe the Federal Reserve has taken some powers that Treasury traditionally had pre-GFC. And remember, Chair Walsh was in the administration during Bush. And then he was also the youngest governor in the history of the Fed. So he was there for the financial crisis. So he has great perspective on both sides. And I think for him, the president kept saying, sure, you don't want this job. And I said, sir, I think to succeed, you have to have been in the building before. So if you look, if we think- So you've turned it down. If you think about the three or four of the finalists, they'd all been in the building before, which I think is a real... You start with a big lead if you understand the institution. So how's Chairman Walsh doing? Sorry? I think he's doing well. We have traditionally, Treasury Secretary and Fed Chair have breakfast every week. I had over 40 breakfasts with Jay Powell. And I think... These are probably a little more cordial? Sorry? These breakfasts are probably a little warmer? Yeah, Chair Powell and I had a very good relationship. And they're private. We talk about the events of the week. We talk about where we think the economy's heading. I'm fortunate that I think... If I look at my call sheet every day, I probably have 100 calls to make. I think if you're a Fed Chair, you probably have three. So part of my job is to make sure that he can hear what's going on in the wider world, what maybe the markets are saying. We have a large markets desk. He does have the New York Fed. And it's a very healthy back and forth. Sector, you came to fame and fortune running hedge funds. But Steve Bannon, one of the most powerful MAGA podcasters, told me, Besant's my guy. Best Treasury Secretary since Alexander Hamilton. In Besant, we trust. That's Steve Bannon. How the hell did a hedge fund guy, former Democratic donor, who managed George Soros' fortune, become a MAGA darling? Well, a couple of things. First, Democratic donor. I made a couple of donations to Democrats. Well, you stood with Al Gorso, yeah. But I would say it's like $300,000 to $15 million done for Republicans. My first election was Ronald Reagan in 1980. I met him on the Yale campus. There were only five of us who went to see him. One was Art Lapper's nephew. So look, I think deep down inside, I'm just a kid from Little River, South Carolina. And I haven't forgotten my roots. And a lot of what I've done, where I have had a good fortune on Wall Street, a lot of the big trades, the big investments, have been against elite consensus. Where President Trump winning, that was one of the best nights our fund ever had. And the market traded down. The market was crashing. I believe my former employer, George Soros, was the one selling it. And I'm sitting there watching this and I'm thinking, this is most pro-business president, maybe of all time, certainly since Calvin Coolidge. And why is the market trading down? So just to push back against elite consensus. And I have a view. And one of the reasons I thought President Trump would win, one of the reasons I thought Brexit would likely happen, was that the people had had enough. So President Trump always thinks about the American people. I think of myself as a Main Street person more than a Wall Street person. I've talked a lot about parallel prosperity. Wall Street always does well. Now it's Main Street's turn. Steve McLaughlin So as part of that, you've tried to bring a private sector mentality approach to this big old government building. You look at your accomplishments. You've got tax cuts done. One big, beautiful bill as one bill on time. I will say I was skeptical of both of those. A bunch of international deals, Trump accounts. You had the search for the new Fed chairman. How has that private sector mentality worked in this building? David Morgan I think, look, the American people go to work every day and work hard. Many of them work overtime. Many of them work on weekends. I have a history of working on Sunday afternoons, Sunday evenings. And it took a lot to get this building open on Sundays. So I could come in, members of my team could come in. It just wasn't something the federal government does. Steve McLaughlin So you're trying to get literal lights, literal heat? David Morgan Literally, the lights turned on and the doors unlocked. And there's this theory. One of the reasons that people are now unhappy with government is you can get a ride at your car or at your house in four minutes. You can get food in 22 minutes. You can get clothes or a book the next day. But the government's still moving slowly. And I think people want to see that the government is moving quickly. Steve McLaughlin So you've tried to speed it up? David Morgan We've tried to speed it up. We have a performance attitude here. And one of the things that I say frequently, a great surprise for me has been the career staff here at Treasury is fantastic. They're fantastic that many of them, the majority of them who I have interacted with, I would hire them in my private sector businesses. It's Thursday. I need a 20-page report on Monday. Great. And it's super high quality. Steve McLaughlin And that has not been common in government for sure. David Morgan It's not common for sure. But I think that there are people who just, they want to be led. They want to make a difference. That's why they come into government. People don't come into government for the retirement benefits. They come to make a difference, to do their job well. And that's what we find here at Treasury, some great civil servants. It is a truism of life. People want to be led. You just announced the completion of auto-enrollment for Trump accounts for kids. Trump accounts supply $1,000 in federal seed money for American children born during this administration, a tax-smart running start for anyone under 18. If you qualified for auto-enrollment, did the money just appear this week? Steve McLaughlin So what happens is auto-enrollment, the accounts have now been created, is the parents just have to go and claim them. David Morgan As you download the app? Steve McLaughlin So you just download the app, trumpaccounts.gov. We've had about 8 million people who already, before we did the auto-enroll, went on and created their own accounts. We decided to make it even easier. And like, as you said, for children born during President Trump's the second term in office, Treasury is going to seed the accounts with $1,000. And that will grow. So I believe that this is the most important benefit for young people since the GI Bill. 38% of Americans have no exposure to our great equity markets. And when I was a kid in rural South Carolina, all I knew about Wall Street was something bad had happened in 1929. And I think this is going to be, we're going to take it from abstract to a real-time learning experience in financial literacy. In nutrition, there's this idea of a food desert that if you live in certain rural areas, urban areas, you don't have access to clean, fresh food. I would submit to you that we had financial service deserts that if the average household doesn't have $500 in cash to meet a medical emergency, then they're not going to open an online brokerage account, put in $10, $20. But by seeding these, by creating these accounts, we are opening this up. It is a gigantic oasis of the financial desert. And our goal is to get every family participating in the innovation and capital markets that drive the U.S. And it's an opening for employers, for philanthropists. Employers, philanthropists, foundations. And I think this can be a new kind of philanthropy that if the philanthropists are really true to their goals, if they want to help the children of America, this is the direct way to do it with 100% of the donation going directly to American children. There's no Starcotech-designed foundation headquarters. There's no annual dinner. There's no big staff. If you really want to do this, it's what Susan and Michael Dell have done. It's what Ray Dalio has done, Brad Gerstner, Harold Hamm. And the other thing too is that these billion dollar gifts are incredible. But if a local philanthropist wants to adopt a zip code, a school district, we're going to be able to tailor those. Many states are thinking of topping these up. I think it's going to become a fringe benefit for many workers, just like a 401k contribution that the employers can make up to a $2,500 contribution. In talking to administration officials for this interview, two themes kept coming up. One is they said you're the most competent cabinet member. Other people said you're the most volatile cabinet member. What kind of person sets you off? Well, let's go back. First of all, I think we have a great cabinet. And I think the president's assembled a different kind of cabinet. When I have a question on the energy to be able to talk to Secretary Burgum, Secretary Wright, both with substantial experience. Secretary Rubio, people may forget, he chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee. So, you know, for him to be the National Security Advisor or Secretary of State. And look, I don't think I'm the most, believe me, I'm far from the most volatile. Well, you've joked that dueling among treasury secretaries, go back to Alexander Hamilton, you have had some heated confrontations. Yeah, I would say that I stand my ground, like Alexander Hamilton, fired if fired upon. And I always point out, did not end well for treasury. The Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burd duel. So my goal is not to duel, but it is to stand my ground. And look, if I think somebody, if I think someone is not following what the president wants, because I am here to do what the president of the United States wants and is not trying to do what is best for the American people. So fired when fired upon? Fired when fired upon. Touche, a warning there. So, yes. You have a surprising biography. You still belong to the French Huguenot Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which your family helped start in the 1680s. Your family got into money trouble and you had a job by nine. You had a job setting out deck chairs? Beach chairs, beach chairs on the beach and as a busboy. So age nine, I was getting a W-2. I was getting tip income. I was getting overtime. So when the president, with his economic policy, no tax and tips, no tax and overtime, I was one of the biggest supporters. And you grow up with a lot of agency at that point. I'd be a very different, our family was affluent for a couple of hundred years and my dad had some bad breaks. But I'm a very different person from having gotten a paycheck since I was nine years old and seeing working Americans up close, the experiencing economic insecurity. One of the reasons, I originally wanted to go to the Naval Academy. One of the reasons I wanted to go because I didn't necessarily have the money to go to Yale, but ended up working three jobs. And now you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That's what people say. I've watched you at McLean Family Restaurant across the river here in McLean, Virginia, talking to the servers there. No tax on tips has become very personal for you. It's become a signature issue for you. Well, it also means I think I'm the most popular cabinet secretary when I walk into a hotel or a restaurant in DC. And the president was adamant about keeping his four signature promises in the tax bill as was I, because I could tell you a couple of old line, very orthodox, economic orthodox Republicans weren't in love with that. And I think we ended up in nature, the most beautiful thing is symmetry. So I think the tax bill ended up with great symmetry. On one side, you had things that are powering industries. So 100% expensing for equipment, 100% expensing for factories, 100% expensing for farm structures. And then on the other side, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. 85% of our seniors aren't paying taxes on social security and deductibility of auto loans on American made cars. Now, you modestly said you wanted to go to the Naval Academy. You actually got an appointment. One of the reasons you've talked about the fact that one of the reasons you didn't go was because you're gay. And did that hold you back earlier in your career? I don't think it did at all. It's very difficult to talk about the counterfactual, but I don't think going to Yale held me back. Maybe some people went to other Ivy League schools would think it might. But I think that it makes you aware. And I've openly spoken about it before too, is I think maybe some of my career choices, great thing about money management is there's a scorecard. It's not maybe in sales, maybe in trading, maybe in relationship management. There's a lot of subjectivity that money management, there's a scorecard. And you said President Trump chose me because he believes I'm the best candidate, not because of my sexual preference or your green eyes. Exactly. And I think that's one of the reasons we have such a great team, that the president makes his decisions all the time. He'll occasionally tell you, tell me, he goes, you're breaking Melania's friend's hearts. They see you on TV and they want an intro and we have to break the news to them. As we say goodbye, last year in the West Wing, you got heated with Elon Musk. It was the talk in the White House. What was that like? Again, I am a huge Elon fan. And in terms of what he was trying to do with government, very supportive. And there was one turn that things were taking that we didn't agree on. And Elon was at the White House the other day for the big AI meeting. Have the two of you met up? Yeah, I mean, that's a good thing. I've often said that we're kind of like a sports team. You can have an argument in the locker room, but you go out in the field together and you're all doing the same thing. So I've been in regular contact with Elon and he's amazing. He's taking us to Mars. Look what he's done with SpaceX and Starlink and all these other things. Starlink is great for the World Cup on a cross-country flight. I can tell you that. Yep. Mr. Secretary, thank you for inviting us into the cash room and thank you for joining the Axio show. Good. I hope you'll come back.