Online critics piled onto Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick after a fellow member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet threw him under the bus on live TV.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid the blame at Commerce's door during a TV appearance Friday, asserting that several agencies had pushed for months to add Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company, to a federal trade blacklist known as the entity list, which falls under the Commerce Department.
Megaspeed has been accused of illegally funneling advanced U.S. chips to China, and Bessent reportedly confronted Lutnick in the White House Situation Room last week over why the firm hasn't been blacklisted. CNN reported that Trump advisers have been discussing pushing Lutnick out.
"Treasury, War, USTR, and State, they were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months, but Commerce has the pen," Bessent said in a clip shared by journalist Aaron Rupar. "You will have to ask them about their internal processes."
Rupar framed the moment as Bessent throwing his colleague "under the bus," and a wave of critics quickly piled on.
Financial journalist Mike Bird argued the phrase didn't do the moment justice.
"This is throwing someone under the bus, stopping the bus, asking the driver to borrow the bus and then reversing backward in the bus to have another go," he quipped.
Ron Filipkowski, a former federal prosecutor and editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch News, marveled that Lutnick remains Commerce secretary after what he characterized as Bessent branding him incompetent and corrupt on television.
"You have to wonder with their mutual Epstein connections what Lutnick has on Trump," he mused.
Bill Kristol, a longtime conservative commentator and editor-at-large at The Bulwark, saw the episode as the start of a blame game.
"Now they're going to try to scapegoat Lutnick. He's guilty as sin," he declared.
But he insisted the blame belongs at the top.
"The individual at the heart of the scandal, the one responsible for the scandal, the person who ultimately needs to be held accountable, is of course Donald Trump," he added.
AI researcher Gary Marcus had little sympathy for the Commerce secretary.
"Under the bus is exactly where Lutnick belongs," Marcus chimed in, calling it "a mystery why he has not yet been fired."