Gay MSNBC host admits Trump’s Treasury pick has him ‘conflicted’

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MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart admitted he felt “conflicted” over one of President-elect Donald Trump’s latest Cabinet picks.

Trump’s nominee to lead the Treasury Department is hedge fund manager Scott Bessent who is openly gay and married with two children. This created inner turmoil for Capehart who is also gay and married to husband Nick Schmit.

The Washington Post opinion writer and host of MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart” shared his mixed feelings on air as he and his panel came to grips with an incoming Republican president having nominated Bessent as the highest-ranking gay official in the upcoming administration.

(Video Credit: MSNBC)

“So yesterday morning my Nick says, ‘Wait, Scott Bessent is gay? And married and has children,’” Capehart said on Sunday’s show.

“Yesterday, when I brought this up, you know he, if he is confirmed, would be the highest-ranking out LGBT person ever to serve — to be appointed and confirmed by the United States Senate. And I said, you know, I’m kind of conflicted about this,” he added.

“In that case, credit where it’s due,” Democratic strategist Jon Reinish conceded.

“I think we expect the markets to shoot up when they open in Asia in a little bit. I think Wall Street likes the guy. It is very interesting, yes, that it is Trump and not one of our team that made that historic nomination,” he admitted. “But it’s interesting looking at the cabinet. You can sort them into sort of the normies, Marco Rubio, Elise Stefanik.”

“You know what? It’s very hard to think about compromise in this moment,” MSNBC contributor Maria Hinojosa chimed in.

“And I have to be honest with you, I’m not a party to normalizing what is happening right now. I’m not a political scientist in the sense of being a strategist. I’m really good on communications,” she said before admonishing Democrats. “But I think, at this point, the Democrats have got to exert whatever power they have and we all would agree that your party, right, needs to roll up their sleeves and get a little bit of spine.”

Reinish noted polls and the epic loss in the election to say of Democrats, “People don’t think we flex enough.”

Trump announced his Treasury secretary nomination last week, writing, “I am most pleased to nominate Scott Bessent to serve as the 79th Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.”

“Scott is widely respected as one of the World’s foremost International Investors and Geopolitical and Economic Strategists,” the president-elect said of the 62-year-old founder of Key Square Group who served as money manager for leftist billionaire George Soros.

“Scott’s story is that of the American Dream,” Trump said, adding that Bessent “has long been a strong advocate of the America First Agenda.”

Wall Street cheered the choice.

“US stocks rose on Monday as small caps rallied near new highs and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose more than 400 points amid a broad sense of optimism over President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Scott Bessent for Treasury secretary,” Yahoo! Finance reported.

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.