‘South California over South Africa any day’: Scott Bessent’s first reaction to claims that Elon Musk hit him

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent shot down the reports of the physical fight between him and Elon Musk over the IRS commissioner and suggested that it was fake news. This episode, where Musk apparently hit Bessent like a rugby player after being called a ‘fraud’ was widely cited as the beginning of the end of the Musk-Trump relationship. But Scott Bessent became the second person to have denied that it happened. The first one was President Donald Trump who said he was not aware of any physical fight between the two, though there were arguments between them, Trump said. “I know Elon Musk body checked you at the White House,” Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) said to Bessent during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the Treasury Department.“You know that?” Bessent shot back. “You believe what you read on Breitbart, that’s what you are telling this Congress.” Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon was the head of Breitbart until his ouster in 2018. “If it’s too sensitive for you, I won’t ask that question,” Gomez said. “I’ll take South Carolina over South Africa any day,” Bessent, the South Carolina native, said. Bannon revealed that they both went to the Oval Office to lobby for their own candidate as the IRS commissioner. Trump chose Bessent’s candidate. As the two men exited his room, there were verbal insults. Steve Bannon described that Scott Bessent called Elon Musk ‘total fraud’. Elon Musk rammed Bessent’s ribcage like a rugby player and Bessent hit Musk back. The kerfuffle required other people to disengage them. When Trump heard about it, he said it was ‘too much’, Bannon narrated on several occasions. It was not known who was Bannon’s source of the detailed description but he said any eyewitness would confirm the same. In a recent interview, Bannon said people were saying that Elon Musk was microdosing that day before the fight happened.