It was 1:30 pm in the White House briefing room, but it must have already been 5 o’clock somewhere for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday when he confused the name of a key waterway for the world’s petroleum market with an equally key ingredient in a popular cocktail.
Bessent was briefing reporters in support of the Trump administration’s effort to tout the effects of last year’s partisan tax bill on Americans’ bottom line when he was asked when he believes gasoline prices will fall from the record prices they’ve been at since the start of President Donald Trump’s unprovoked war on Iran to the $3 target set by Energy Secretary Chris Wright last month.
He replied that the future of fuel prices would be “up to how the negotiations go” and noted that Trump thinks the six-week-old war is almost at its end.
“The U.S. kept their side on the ceasefire. We’ve stopped firing. The Straits of Vermouth have not been completely reopened, so we will see, and I’m optimistic that during the summer, we will see gas with a three in front of it, sooner rather than later,” he said.
Bessent had mispronounced the name of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel between the coasts of Iran and Oman that Tehran has turned into a choke point to slow down oil tankers’ transit and cause petroleum prices to spike well above $100 per barrel, with gas prices in the U.S. reaching record levels as a result.
And while the “Straits of Vermouth” aren’t a real place, vermouth is the name of a fortified wine produced in Italy, France or Spain and flavored with various roots, barks, herbs, spices and seeds. A half-ounce of the liquid, combined with two-and-a-half ounces of either vodka or gin — never both — makes a classic martini when stirred (or for James Bond fans, shaken) with ice and poured into a chilled glass.
The Democratic National Committee’s official X account immediately picked up on the gaffe to roast both Bessent and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth by reposting a video of the botched statement along with a photo of Hegseth and the caption: “Vermouth?”
The post not only mocked Bessent’s thirsty slip of the tongue but also roasted the defense secretary’s checkered history with alcohol.
During his confirmation to be Trump’s defense chief, NBC News reported that Hegseth’s former Fox News colleagues were regularly left concerned by his alcohol consumption while he served as a co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend.
Two sources told NBC that they regularly smelled booze on the then-anchorman’s breath before he went on-air, while another Fox employee said his co-workers regularly had to “call him to make sure he didn’t oversleep because we knew he’d be out partying the night before.”
A separate report in The New Yorker found that a whistleblower at Hegseth’s prior employer, a nonprofit called Concerned Veterans for America, had described him as being frequently intoxicated on the job, occasionally to the point where he had to be carried out of official events
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