Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has a reputation as the most sensible of the Trump-whisperers, perhaps the only one. It was Bessent who used the potential for a stock market crash to persuade Trump to agree to a 90-day postponement of his lunatic tariff threats in April, and Bessent who kept talking Trump off the ledge whenever Trump threatened Fed Chair Jay Powell.

But lately, as Trump’s policies on both fronts have become more crazed and his rhetoric more frenzied, Bessent has decided to get with the Trump program. He did not talk Trump out of punishing Brazil with 50 percent tariffs or abruptly reviving the threat of high tariffs on Canada as retaliation for the fake story about Canada being a major source of fentanyl that Trump suddenly revived.

And Bessent, who in the past has defended the Fed’s independence, has now joined Trump in Powell-bashing. “I guess this tariff derangement syndrome happens even over at the Fed,” Bessent said on The Ingraham Angle on Fox News earlier this month, managing to both attack Powell and defend Trump’s tariffs.

And there could be something in it for Bessent himself. As Trump has floated the idea of naming the successor to Powell long before his term expires next May as a strategy of weakening Powell as a lame duck, Bessent has been put in charge of auditioning candidates. This recalls what we can dub the Cheney Rule, named for George W. Bush’s assignment of Dick Cheney to find his running mate: If the person responsible for recruitment wants the job him- or herself, the recruiter will find a way to get it.