Trump’s Argentina Bailout Will Make Bessent’s Old Friend Even Richer
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s $20 billion Argentinian bailout is not only poised to prop up President Javier Milei’s anarcho-capitalist regime with U.S. taxpayer dollars; it’s also set to deliver a significant windfall to one of Bessent’s old friends, per a Monday report by Judd Legum at Popular Information.
Robert Citrone, a billionaire who founded the hedge fund Discovery Capital Management, has a decadeslong relationship with Bessent that’s gone unreported in the U.S. press.
Legum cites descriptions in Latin American business publications of Bessent and Citrone’s friendship, including one paper that notes their “personal relationship as well as a past working relationship.” He also reports that when they were co-workers at Soros Fund Management, Citrone, by his own account, gave Bessent highly profitable investment advice.
Since Milei’s ascendance, Citrone has bet big on the Argentine economy. But amid the recent economic downturn under Milei, his Argentine investments were in trouble.
Enter Bessent. Last week, the treasury secretary announced a $20 billion currency swap line that, Citrone told Bloomberg, “has helped tremendously” and “will pay dividends for the U.S. strategically.” It’s certainly boosted Citrone’s holdings. (Notably too, Legum writes, “In early September, days before Bessent’s announcement, Citrone purchased more Argentine bonds.”)
This wasn’t the first time the U.S. treasury secretary has seemingly pleased Citrone by acting on Argentina’s behalf.
Legum, citing the financial publication CE Noticias Financieras, reports that Citrone lobbied Bessent to push for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund in April, as the country’s economic woes grew. Bessent then reportedly helped persuade the IMF to disburse $20 billion to Argentina, which still failed to stabilize its economy, thus setting the stage for America’s own $20 billion intervention.
Members of Donald Trump’s administration are scrambling to right their ship, after the president’s tariffs sent a major foreign trading partner into the arms of Argentina, which just received a massive bailout from the U.S. government.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was spotted at the United Nations General Assembly last week reading a panicked message from “BR,” who some have determined to be Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. The message linked to the X account of Ben Scholl, a midwestern grain trader who has sounded the alarm on Washington’s newly-tossed lifeline to Buenos Aires.
“Just a heads up. I am getting more intel, but this is highly unfortunate. We bailed out Argentina yesterday and in return, Argentina removed their export tariffs on grains, reducing their price to China at a time when we would normally be selling to China,” the message read.
“Soy prices are dropping further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us,” the message continued, with Rollins adding: “On a plane but scott I can call you when I land.”
The photograph, taken by photojournalist Angelina Katsanis for the Associated Press, has already circulated through Argentine news.
Last week, Bessent pledged that the United States was “ready to do what is needed within its mandate to support Argentina,” which was a “systemically important U.S. ally in Latin America.” He said that U.S. officials were in talks to establish a $20 billion swap line with Argentina’s Central Bank—an institution Argentine President Javier Milei once promised to abolish—and purchase secondary or primary government debt. Bessent even hinted at handouts from U.S. companies.
Scholl argued that this was a huge mistake. “China and Argentina work together for soybeans as Bessent offers to subsidize the Argentine economy,” Scholl wrote on X Tuesday. “They think you are stupid.”
China, the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, has not purchased any American soybeans since May, pivoting to suppliers in Argentina and Brazil as Trump struggles to land an actual trade deal with Beijing. Even top Republicans have been forced to admit that Trump’s tariffs have created a squeeze for farmers, one that the president said could be offset with “millions” or “billions” of tariff revenue—he wasn’t actually sure.
“The U.S. trade war with China has dealt a huge blow to American soybean producers, since China paused soybean imports from the U.S.,” Rohit Chopra, former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Board, wrote on X Monday. “But this may not be temporary, as Argentina and other countries cut deals with China to cut America out of the business.”
“The Treasury Secretary should: (1) Immediately hit pause on this inappropriate bailout of Argentina that is further harming American farmers (2) Affix a privacy screen to his iPhone, available online and in stores for roughly $10,” Chopra wrote in a separate post.
Oklahoma public school teachers are required to teach the Bible to their students—but the copies they received from the state earlier this month to do so don’t accurately reflect history.
Former state Superintendent Ryan Walters placed a 55,000 unit order for new Bibles in October, but the parameters he set for permissible editions were eyebrow-raisingly specific. Bid documents required the successful edition to include the King James text as well as several core elements of U.S. history lesson plans, including copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Constitution. That narrowed the pool down to one option available on the market: Donald Trump and Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible.
Aaron Baker, a history and government teacher in Oklahoma City, received two copies of Trump’s edition to his classroom earlier this month. However, he quickly noticed that something was amiss: The version of the Constitution published between the book’s leather-bound folds was “wrong.”
The version of the Constitution delivered to Oklahoma’s classrooms for statewide instruction was 160 years out of date and excluded more than a dozen amendments.
Notably, the incorrect version still featured the three-fifths compromise, a vestige of slavery that handed more political power to slave-owning states, while omitting the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially abolished slavery. The incorrect edition also lacked the Fourteenth Amendment, which constitutionalized the right to due process and granted........© New Republic
