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President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he’ll nominate hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, an advocate for deficit reduction, to serve as his next treasury secretary.
Trump also said he would nominate Russel Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a position Vought held during Trump’s first presidency. Vought was closely involved with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term that he tried to distance himself from during the campaign.
The announcements Friday evening showed how Trump was fleshing out the financial side of his new administration. Although Bessent is closely aligned with Wall Street and could earn bipartisan support, Vought is known as a Republican hardliner.
Trump said Bessent would “help me usher in a new Golden Age for the United States,” while Vought “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.”
Bessent and Vought were only two of several personnel decisions that Trump disclosed Friday evening.
Trump said he chose Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, an Oregon Republican, as his labor secretary, and Scott Turner, a former football player who worked in Trump’s first administration, as his housing secretary.
“I look forward to working with her to create tremendous opportunity for American Workers,” Trump said in a statement.
In addition, Trump rounded out his health team. He chose Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a general practitioner and Fox News contributor, to be surgeon general; Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Republican congressman from Florida, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, as head of the Food and Drug Administration. Trump previously said he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime spreader of conspiracy theories about vaccines, as health secretary.
Alex Wong was named as principal deputy national security adviser, while Sebastian Gorka will serve as senior director for counterterrorism. Wong worked on issues involving Asia during Trump’s first term, and Gorka is a conservative commentator who spent less than a year in Trump’s White House.
Bessent, 62, is the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, after having worked on-and-off for Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay treasury secretary.
He told Bloomberg in August that he decided to join Trump’s campaign in part to attack the mounting U.S. national debt. That would include slashing government programs and other spending.
“This election cycle is the last chance for the U.S. to grow our way out of this mountain of debt without becoming a sort of European-style socialist democracy,” he said then.