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Source: Treasury Secy Threatens To Punch Another Trump Official; Democrats Divided On Economic "Abundance" Agenda For 2028; Ann Chauvin's Mission: Restoring Dignity And Giving Support To Thrive For Those With Mental Health Challenges In D.C. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired September 08, 2025 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:30:00]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- administration economic officials were on the verge of a brawl last week at a MAGA dinner party, MAGA dinner party, I should say, right here in Washington, D.C. Who are these officials? We're talking about the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, and a top housing regulator, Bill Pulte. Bessent threatened to punch Pulte in the face.

It is CNN's Kristen Holmes and other colleagues who have this new reporting confirmed, I think, by Politico, which first reported it. Kristen, what are you told by your sources?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, I was told by a source who witnessed the whole event that it was insane. That was the word that they used to talk about what happened at this dinner party. Now, this is at the executive branch, that's an exclusive club, the social club in Georgetown that was set up by a number of very wealthy MAGA supporters, one of them being Don Jr. himself.

So it was at this dinner. Essentially, the two men ended up near each other during a cocktail hour in which the source heard a expletive- laden rant from Bessent at Pulte. Now, we were told that he essentially accused him of bad-mouthing him to President Trump, saying he knew what he was doing and that he wasn't going to sit around and talk to him.

Then at one point, it got so heated that he threatened to punch him in the face. A founder, a co-founder of the executive branch had to break it up. And during that time, Bessent was essentially saying, let's take this outside to Pulte, who, according to this source, seemed a little bit confused, definitely taken off guard.

I mean, this is not the first time, of course, we've seen the Treasury Secretary in an altercation that got incredibly loud, heated, and allegedly, according to some sources, grew somewhat physical. We know that months ago, when Elon Musk was still parading around the White House, he and Bessent got into an altercation that involved screaming that -- over who was going to lead the IRS.

So at this right here, we have not heard any comment from the White House. We, of course, reached out to the White House, Treasury, to Pulte, nobody has responded to this. But, again, sources in the room describing it as absolutely insane, confusing at one point.

I will note, both of these men apparently stayed for the dinner portion of this, but they were seated nowhere near each other. And of course, Dana, one thing to point out is Pulte, who many people hadn't really heard of until the last several weeks, he's really had his stock rising within MAGA World and with the President after he's taken on personally his charge to try and fire Lisa Cook. He was the one who brought the charges of mortgage fraud against her.

BASH: Wow. OK, that was not on my bingo card for today.

Thank you so much, Kristen. Appreciate that reporting.

Back here at the table. Jeff, you cover the Trump administration. You go to the White House every day. You have dealt with both of these officials.

JEFF MASON, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, REUTERS: It -- what comes to my mind is just the pressure that some of these people are under to stay within the President's good graces. I mean, we watch the Cabinet meeting where every single cabinet official praises the President. It's got to be sort of the same idea.

If you hear that someone within MAGA World or within the Cabinet or within the administration is speaking poorly of you to the President, which is absolutely imaginable, a lot of people have access, direct access to the president of the United States, that it will lead to some high emotions.

Now, those are pretty high emotions if we're talking about --

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- Yes.

MASON: -- stepping outside, but it's a lot of intensity.

RAJU: Bill Pulte has become an interesting figure in this administration. Typically, the top housing official is a bureaucrat, a technocrat, someone who's really emerged deeply in housing policy. He is someone who has been a -- been driving this effort to try to go after Democrats over alleged mortgage fraud.

He has not really gone after Republicans who have similar issues as well, like Ken Paxton who's running for Senate in Texas. But, nevertheless, he has really elevated his profile in this regard. So, you know, this is -- yes, Kristen said, someone you not would have heard of before, but now the top housing official, he's really in Trump's good graces because of these efforts.

AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": You know, my buttoned-up analysis is that Trump likes to have these kind of rivalries and them going at each other for the attention. My less buttoned-up analysis for Bessent is like, if you're going to keep threatening, you've got to, you know, put up or shut up. You've got to, you know, say, don't just talk about it, be about it. You know, at some point, you can't keep threatening to hit people. You're going to have to back it up. That's my less buttoned-up analysis.

BASH: Wow. OK, you heard it here.

RAJU: But you want to see punches thrown.

RASCOE: Live. You can't just talk about it.

BASH: I'm sure -- you know, maybe we'll see them sell tickets because why not?

RAJU: In the South Lawn.

BASH: Why not?

RASCOE: You'll see.

BASH: Why not.

MASON: It's a show.

RAJU: The Rose Garden Club.

BASH: Yes, I mean, it goes -- well, anyway.

Coming up, what is the abundance movement? We're going to explain how a wonky book about regulation and zoning laws is driving a debate within the Democratic Party about its path forward.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:39:37]

BASH: For Democrats searching for a way out of their deep political hole post-2024, the word "abundance" has become kind of a loaded one. Let's start with its origin as a political term. You see right there. It's the title of a book written by journalists Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, arguing Democrats need to confront how their own regulations have made it too hard to build things Americans want and too hard to show people that government can actually make their lives better.

[12:40:05]

Now, it has been embraced by Democrats like Barack Obama and Gavin Newsom. It also has some pretty fierce critics on the left who think the party should be more focused on pure populism and fighting corporate power.

Well, the co-author of that book, Derek Thompson, joins me now to discuss this. Thank you so much for being here.

DEREK THOMPSON, CO-AUTHOR, "ABUNDANCE": Great to be here. BASH: Now, for people just tuning in and are, you know, part of the discourse within the Democratic Party, can you define the abundance agenda?

THOMPSON: Sure. Let's start with 2025 --

BASH: Yes.

THOMPSON: -- the issues that Americans are most interested in. You know, we're talking in Washington, D.C., where it seems to be that both Republicans and Democrats are obsessed with affordability, as well they should be. They say interest rates are too high, so Americans can't buy homes. In fact, the average age of first-time home ownership has gone from 28 to 38 in just the last five years.

Home prices are too high in many of America's most productive cities. Electricity prices are skyrocketing across the country. And a lot of people have historically looked at things like housing and energy being too unaffordable by saying, let's just throw money at the problem. Let's just give people money.

And one thing that we're saying in this book is, what about not just that demand side of the economy, handing out money, what about the supply side as well? What about making it easier to build houses in the places where we need them?

BASH: So cutting red tape?

THOMPSON: Sometimes it means cutting red tape. Sometimes it means changing markets in ways that allows the private sector working with the public sector to build more of what people actually need. People need houses to live in. People need electricity in order to run everything that makes their lives work.

And what we're saying is, here's a set of creative ideas to make it easier to build homes, to make it easier to build energy. And this isn't just, you know, a wonky set of proposals. I think one reason that it's really caught on is that this is what Americans are thinking about and talking about.

You can go back to the 2024 election and ask Americans, you know, why did you switch from the Democratic to the Republican column, or why as a young person did you vote for Donald Trump for the first time? Well, over and over again, it was all about affordability, cost of living, inflation, the economy, housing prices. I think this is a set of answers that essentially says, let's get out of our own way and start building again.

BASH: You know, there's talk that President Trump may declare a national housing emergency, and it could include ways to standardize zoning laws. I know this sounds very wonky to maybe people who are not used to seeing that on the show, but let's talk about it from the point of view just of not just the policy, but also the politics of that. Does that sound to you like he's -- maybe he's not calling his agenda the abundance agenda, but he's kind of getting it?

THOMPSON: Do you remember infrastructure week? Do you remember the first --

BASH: Many, many times.

THOMPSON: -- infrastructure week? Do you remember the 19th infrastructure week? I think that the housing emergency might become a little bit of an infrastructure week. But let's go back to January 2025. Donald Trump is elected in an affordability election, and he had an opportunity in that moment to say, I'm going to do everything I possibly can to make it easier to build houses in America.

What do houses need, right? They need lumber, which we import from Canada. They need drywall, which we import from Mexico. And they need often foreign born labor, immigrant labor, about a third to 40 percent of the construction labor force in America is foreign born.

What does Donald Trump do instead? He raises tariffs on Canada, making lumber more expensive, tariffs on Mexico, making the drywall more expensive, and he shuts down immigration entirely, which is going to cause a labor shortage across the housing construction industry.

He's done everything you possibly could to exacerbate the housing emergency that he's now just thinking about announcing. That's the worst possible way you could go about making it easier to build houses in America. What the abundance agenda does is it looks at a set of problems, like let's say housing, and say, what are the bottlenecks?

What are the actual sticking points here, and how could we fix them? And what we think is that especially in cities like New York, Washington, D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, in many cases, despite the irony that these cities and states are run by Democrats, it's rules that Democrats and progressive voters vote into existence that get in the way of building housing.

Too much zoning, too long permitting, environmental reviews that make it so that one neighbor can sue another neighbor and make it impossible to build something.

BASH: And forgive me, in the shorthand political parlance of Republicans, it's Democrats want big government.

THOMPSON: Well, what's interesting here, Dana, is that sometimes it's regulations that get in the way of government doing what government wants to do. Like, there are many politicians in California who say, we want to build houses. Many politicians in Massachusetts who say, we want to build clean energy. But it's the rules that keep government from being able to accomplish its own ends that we're trying to cut.

BASH: And the rules I'm going to emphasize what you said, the rules that the Democratic elected officials who run those states put in place.

I want you to listen to what Bernie Sanders said, because I interviewed him last month, and I specifically asked him about the abundance movement and whether or not he thought, you know, was a good idea. Effectively, I'm paraphrasing what you're saying to support faster, cheaper, more efficient government. Let's look at what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

[12:45:12]

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: We live in a world which is much, much too complicated. So if the goal is to make it sure that within environmental safeguards, we can move forward much faster, the answer is yes. But that is not the fundamental problem facing America. The fundamental problem facing America is that you've got a handful of oligarchs who have enormous wealth, enormous economic power, enormous political power, and they want even more.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: So he and others are arguing you've got to stick with more pure populism in order to win back seats.

THOMPSON: Populism can solve some problems. Fighting oligarchy can solve some problems. The richest people in America are responsible for some very specific problems in America.

But what if you're interested in a very specific question? What if you're interested in why Texas and places like Dallas and Austin build so many houses and places like Los Angeles and San Francisco simply can't? Build so few houses that you have hundreds of thousands of people moving from California to Texas.

Is that because Texas has fewer oligarchs than California? Elon Musk just moved everything he does from California to Texas. So you can't blame this on Elon Musk. What I'm trying to say here is not that we should let Elon Musk off the hook for the things he's responsible for.

It's the idea that actually -- ironically, it's the first thing Bernie said. Some things are complicated. It can simultaneously be true that America has an oligarchy problem. And that the reasoning that California --

BASH: Yes.

THOMPSON: -- can't build houses has nothing to do with oligarchs. It has to do with rules, regulations, and a set of sort of lawyerly and litigation norms that are specific to the cities and states where too often progressives hold the most power. That's an important problem to solve. Because if Democrats are going to win back trust, not just Bernie, who enjoys enormous trust from voters --

BASH: Yes.

THOMPSON: -- across the political aisle, but if Democrats as a party are going to win back trust, they have to convince Americans that if Americans vote for them, they'll do what they promise to do. And too often, they just don't.

BASH: Derek Thompson, wow. That was a great discussion. I learned a lot from you. Please come back because this is just the beginning as we get closer to elections.

THOMPSON: Thank you.

BASH: Thanks for being here.

In the midst of our chaotic world, it's easy to miss the simple humanity making profound, positive changes in our midst. Up next, I'll have an inspiring story right here in Washington, D.C.

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[12:52:03]

BASH: In a series called, "Champions for Change," CNN recognizes people quietly working behind the scenes to improve life for others. That certainly describes my champion right here in Washington, D.C., Ann Chauvin. She makes sure people with mental health issues get the support and housing they need.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mental illness can be very isolating because you feel so alone and helpless.

ANN CHAUVIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WOODLEY HOUSE: Woodley House provides housing and support services to people with mental health disorders. You're surrounded by people who understand what you're going through and treat you with dignity.

BASH: Tell me about the history here. Back when it started, it was revolutionary.

CHAUVIN: So in 1958, places like Woodley House did not exist. People were institutionalized. And Joan Doniger, who's working at the city's psychiatric hospital, and she noticed that there were so many people that were well enough to leave, but they had nowhere to go. So this group home was the first of its kind on the East Coast.

BASH (voice-over): Today, Woodley House owns more than 10 properties in Washington, D.C. that offer varying levels of support. Ann Chauvin worked here early in her career and returned to run the organization nearly eight years ago.

CHAUVIN: It was actually when I worked at Woodley House in the 90s that I saw how critical this work is.

BASH: How did you come into this work?

CHAUVIN: Growing up, my Uncle Jack had a very significant mental illness, and I always connected with him. And so I knew from when I was just a little kid that I needed to work in mental health. And later, he went into a group home, and he was so happy.

Every person that comes into Woodley House, I think of my Uncle Jack.

BASH: Wow. BASH (voice-over): Determined to help even more people, Ann is now leading Woodley House into a new era.

CHAUVIN: We had been serving about 300 people per year for decades. We needed to do more. In 2024, we served 497 people.

BASH: Wow.

CHAUVIN: I'll hug you anytime.

There's just too many people who really need the kind of loving environments that we can provide.

BASH: I've been involved with the Woodley House for like 15 years, and I, like so many people, have close family members who have really struggled with mental health challenges. They just need somebody to reach out their hand and say, I got you.

Reginald was an engineer at the top of his professional game, and then he fell.

REGINALD BODDIE, WOODLEY HOUSE RESIDENT: I was drinking and driving on a rainy night and lost control of the car. And I was hospitalized for like 18 months. And I no longer have a career.

I went through a great state of depression. I needed more help than I could give myself. And I was introduced to Woodley House.

[12:55:06]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And what about your psych appointment? How did that go?

BODDIE: Went well. Well, I'm still sane, yes.

That's when the support came.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good afternoon, everyone.

BODDIE: At first, I would just observe. And then some of the stories started to sound familiar.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ever since the implosion of my life, I'll start to shut down at a certain point.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I could be more open and more truthful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's always more I could be doing, you know. They gave me the recipe.

BODDIE: I'm doing the cooking, you know.

BASH: I was talking to Ann. One of her big goals has been for people to feel like they are home.

BODDIE: Right. BASH: Do you feel that way?

BODDIE: I definitely feel that way. I feel like I'm about to leave home because now I'm going on to the next level, to my independent housing.

CHAUVIN: Well, is it a one bedroom? Is it a studio?

BODDIE: Yes, it's -- no, it's a one bedroom.

CHAUVIN: We were sad. We know we're going to miss him. But mostly just super happy and excited.

Our hope for our residents is that they could live happy, productive lives.

BASH: So it's not about surviving, it's thriving.

CHAUVIN: Thriving.

BASH: And you see that.

CHAUVIN: We see it every day.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

BASH: CNN's "Champions for Change" special airs Saturday at 10:00 p.m. Eastern.

Thanks so much for joining Inside Politics. CNN Central starts after a quick break.

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