Scott Bessent

I want to use this moment to speak to the Muslims of New York City.

God, he's a fraud.

I want to speak to the memory of my aunt.

Who stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab.

I mean, this is all the Republican Party has to offer.

Cheap jokes about Islamophobia so as to not have to recognize what people are living through.

Attempts to pit people's humanity against each other.

And I think whether it's J.D.

Vance or it's Andrew Cuomo, it is the same kind of politics.

It's a politics of division.

The reason that I've called Andrew Cuomo Donald Trump's puppet

is not just because they share the same billionaire donors.

It's not just because they see themselves in each other.

It's also because their vision of leading a city or a country is one where you are only able to build a constituency by pitting it against another one.

And that's what we're seeing in this moment.

And let's just talk about the moment we have at hand.

We have a shutdown of the federal government.

We have

Americans across this country living in fear about rising health care costs, about the fact that we're going to see decimating cuts to SNAP.

We have active duty military families in line for food pantries.