The Remarkable Reinvention of Scott Bessent: Liberal Megadonor to MAGA Brawler

A failed hedge fund, a $2 billion parting gift from Soros, and a spectacularly swift conversion to MAGA: The improbable rise of America's most shameless Treasury Secretary.

Scott Bessent’s transformation from George Soros’s golden retriever to Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary makes J.D. Vance’s hillbilly-to-venture-capitalist-to-MAGA-prophet arc look like amateur hour. At least Vance had the decency to spend a few years pretending to wrestle with his conscience. Bessent speedran his entire moral collapse in the time it takes most people to change their Netflix password.

For two decades, Bessent was welded to Soros like a remora to a shark—chief investment officer, trusted confidant, the man who turned liberal billions into more liberal billions. This wasn’t some secret conservative biding his time. This was a man throwing Gore fundraisers at his East Hampton estate (because of course it was East Hampton), writing checks to Obama, dropping $25,000 on Hillary. When he finally left in 2015, Soros handed him $2 billion as a parting gift.

Then Trump won, and wouldn’t you know it, Bessent had a Road to Damascus moment—except his conversion happened in about fif…