Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was grilled about his department’s plans to print commemorative $250 bills featuring President Donald Trump on Thursday amid growing economic tensions during a heated confrontation in the White House press room.

“Do you think it’s a good idea, though, when people are struggling to afford gas and groceries?” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Bessent during a press briefing.

Bessent confirmed that his department has prepared the design for a $250 bill featuring Trump pending congressional passage. He pushed back against the notion that the Trump administration is pushing for this initiative by clarifying “the president doesn’t do it; the House and the Senate have to do it.”

A recent report by The Washington Post, citing four current and former employees at Bessent’s department, suggests that U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach and his senior adviser, Mike Brown, urged staff at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing last year to prepare prototypes of the $250 bill.

British painter Iain Alexander, the artist taking credit for the mock-up’s design, told the Post he spoke to Trump about the design and he even endorsed changes to his original work.

“He likes to call me his favorite British artist,” Alexander told the newspaper.

When confronted by Collins about the Post’s report that two political appointees asked the agencies to ready the bill, Bessent merely slammed the exclusive as something he didn’t “really understand.”

“Yeah, terribly written, terribly edited, because basically what it says is that Treasury is following the law, and that we’ve created the bill, and that it’s up to Congress, but that we follow the bill, and it’s up to — I didn’t really understand what the story was.”

Collins pressed the Treasury secretary if, politically, he believes “it’s a good idea, though? When people are struggling to afford gas and groceries.”

The clash between the two comes amid growing tensions over the Trump administration’s handling of the economy. A recent report by the Labor Department, citing U.S. wholesale inflation data from last month, found that producer prices rose 6%.

Consumer prices have also increased 3.8% from April 2025, amid Trump’s war in Iran that is already costing Americans tens of billions of dollars.

Bessent argued that Collins’ question was “bifurcated.”

“Do you think we should have a 250th anniversary celebration?” he argued

“Well, that’s happening anyways,” Collins responded.

“But Kaitlan, it’s not happening anyway. It’s happening because it’s being funded by private citizens, by the federal government, by state governments, by municipal governments to celebrate our country,” Bessent said.

“And I don’t think that there’s anything untoward about having the president of the United States, that the person who was president of the United States on the 250th anniversary bill,” he concluded.