Trump’s ‘interesting problem’ with Treasuries | USAEMALL.com

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Well, this is, uh, something.

President Donald Trump suggested that Elon Musk’s government efficiency team has found irregularities while examining data at the US Treasury Department, and intimated that may lead the US to disregard some payments.

“There could be a problem, we’ve been reading about that, with Treasuries,” Trump told reporters Sunday on Air Force One en route to the Super Bowl. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he was talking about US government debt, or payments processed through the Treasury Department.

“That could be an interesting problem because it could be that a lot of those things don’t count,” he said. “Therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought of.”

Trump didn’t elaborate on what problems Musk found. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has sought access to Treasury Department payments data, but Musk’s statements on social media have largely concerned payments to contractors and grant recipients, not bondholders.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request to elaborate. The Treasury Department also didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s attempt to return American creditworthiness to its pre-Alexander Hamilton’s state is . . . interesting. But this is so wild that we’re inclined to assume and hope that markets will shrug it off as just another brain-fart from an administration that starts and ends trade wars within 24 hours.

Not because Treasury secretary Scott Bessent will probably be flabbergasted at this, just days after he said that both he and president Trump were “focused” on getting the 10-year Treasury yield down. After all, the roll-call of people who have tried and failed to play a restraining role on Trump is longer than a bad year.

No, this will probably get ignored and downplayed simply because any real and sustained suggestion that the US government could selectively default on some of its sovereign bonds — let alone “a lot” — would trigger a financial crisis so swift and severe that it would make any tariff tantrums seem puny in comparison.