Lawrence O’Donnell delivered a blistering critique of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday, branding the multimillionaire a “sleazy punk” and a “buffoon” over his outlandish defenses of President Donald Trump.

O’Donnell said Bessent’s testimony during Wednesday’s hearing on oversight of the U.S. financial system was unprecedented, particularly in the way he insulted Democratic lawmakers.

“That is a Trump Cabinet invention,” O’Donnell said. “They invented it this time around. That’s not what they were doing last time. We’ve never had a more ridiculous secretary of the Treasury than that clown who you just saw.”

O’Donnell said he once believed Trump’s first-term Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, represented the low point for the role.

“But he now looks like a statesman compared to the buffoon Donald Trump has put in that job to lie for him every day,” O’Donnell said, arguing that Bessent — a married gay man — was humiliating himself by serving Trump and the GOP.

O’Donnell suggested Bessent’s behavior changed once he came into Trump’s orbit. “There was no evidence of Scott Bessent being a pathological liar before working for Donald Trump,” he said. “But he is Donald Trump’s best student in the art form of Trump-speak, which is deranged, irrational, irrelevant lying.”

Bessent is now Trump’s “most tortured accomplice,” per the title of O’Donnell’s analysis. Watch the clip here: