Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, advised Donald Trump not to host Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, having called the Ukrainian president a “little fucker”, a “special-needs child” and “Mr Bean on crack”, according to a new book.
The suggestion that a US cabinet official described a world leader in such terms is included in Regime Change, a blockbusting account of the second Trump administration by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, set to be published worldwide on Tuesday.
News of Bessent’s alleged remarks may embarrass the Trump administration, although the meeting that did take place on 28 February 2025 proved outright disastrous, as Trump and JD Vance blasted Zelenskyy for not being grateful for aid in his fight against Russian invaders, and for not wearing a suit.
The issue of aid to Ukraine remains at the fore, and was discussed at the G7 summit in France earlier this week.
“Several Trump aides had been worried” about the potential for a blow-up when Zelenskyy came to the White House, ostensibly to seal a minerals deal drafted by Bessent, Swan and Haberman write. Then-national security adviser Mike Waltz “tried – unsuccessfully – to get the message across that Zelenskyy should come wearing a suit”, they continue. “Bessent had strongly recommended to Trump that he not even allow Zelenskyy into the White House before he had signed” the deal.
“‘I’ve dealt with this little fucker,’ Bessent would say to associates about Zelenskyy,” according to the book. “‘He’s tricky. He’s like the special-needs child for the Europeans. And he’s acting like Mr Bean on crack.”
The treasury department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zelenskyy did come, and Bessent was in the room as Vance carpeted their visitor. “Others present could see that Vance was steadily turning red,” Haberman and Swan write, as Zelenskyy’s insistence on pushing for security guarantees “began to sound to Vance like impertinence and ingratitude”.
Things went south from there.
After the disastrous meeting, Bessent told Bloomberg that Zelenskyy scored “one of the great diplomatic own goals”, adding: “I was shocked, shocked that President Zelenskyy would come into the Oval Office, behave like this, speak to the president, speak to the vice-president, but more importantly, disrespect the American people like this.”
Regime Change also contains alleged details of Bessent’s unsuccessful handling of the minerals deal. Prior to the Oval Office fiasco, the treasury secretary visited Kyiv to press Zelenskyy to sign. It did not go well.
“For 45 minutes, the men berated each other,” Swan and Haberman write. “Bessent had only been on the job for a few days, and already he had gotten into a shouting match with the leader of a country in the middle of a war. Finally he looked at Zelensky and said: ‘What the fuck do you want to do?’”
Negotiations are said to have stalled while Bessent battled the commerce secretary Howard Lutnick over how the deal should be worded. Eventually, Swan and Haberman write, “Trump asked JD Vance’s wife, Usha, also a Yale Law School graduate, to review the Ukrainian edits to the minerals deal. She declared the document ‘awful’, and [took] a heavy pencil to it.”
Most embarrassing for Bessent, however, may be his reported view of Trump himself, whom he is said to have compared to perhaps the greatest progressive boogeyman in many Republican minds.
Bessent told associates “Trump reminded him … of his old boss, the legendary investor and major Democratic donor George Soros”, according to the book. “‘They are the same animal,’ Bessent said.”