President Donald Trump’s administration “wants to turn the clock back to 2008 and let Wall Street run wild.”

That’s how US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) responded on Wednesday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s comments to Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo about the administration’s deregulatory push.

Without naming it, Bessent took aim at the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a 2010 law that Warren, then a longtime Harvard University professor, fought for in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Recalling that era, Warren said: “We all know how that ended—with taxpayers bailing out Wall Street while millions lost their homes and got fired from their jobs. Donald Trump could be setting the stage for the next crash.”

Warren was far from alone in calling out Bessent after journalist Aaron Rupar noted that during the Fox interview, the ex-hedge fund manager said: “I chair something called FSOC, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and these 2008, 2009, 2010 financial rules were too tight. They have hamstrung the American financial system. It was time for a change. We’re gonna be safe, smart, and sound in terms of our deregulation. But we have to take the financial system out of this straitjacket.”

University of Michigan business law professor Jeremy Kress said: “Fact check: The decade following the Dodd-Frank Act marked the longest period of economic growth in US history. The main problem with the post-2008 reforms is that they did not do nearly enough to limit the nonbank risk-taking that Bessent and his allies have enabled.”

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Progressive political commentator and YouTuber Kyle Kulinski declared, “These people are hell-bent on creating a new Great Depression.”

Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said, “Remember BLEAT: Bessent Lies about Everything All the Time.”

The Fox appearance on Tuesday came after Bessent earlier this month announced an overhaul to the structure of FSOC—which was established by Dodd-Frank—and wrote in the introduction letter to the council’s annual report that it “would shift its focus from ‘prophylactic’ regulatory and supervisory policies to an approach aimed at removing red tape in areas like artificial intelligence, in a bid to spur economic growth,” as Politico summarized at the time.

As Politico also reported:

Markets groups and members of Congress expressed their concern over the changes. In a letter to Bessent… Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) expressed concern that the FSOC has met fewer times this year than in any past year of its existence and that the council is “sabotaging its own authorities.” Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets, an advocacy group focused on regulation, stated that “undermining the FSOC is undermining the economy and the financial system.”

Sharing the Politico report on social media earlier this month, Kress said that “this is a dereliction of duty by the Financial Stability Oversight Council. But if there is a silver lining, it is that the Trump administration now unequivocally owns whatever crisis lies ahead.”

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