As President-elect Donald Trump swiftly moves to name his picks for several top Cabinet positions in his incoming administration, he has been more carefully weighing a pair of leading candidates for Treasury secretary — who are now jockeying to win the coveted nomination in a messy proxy battle over one of the most consequential roles in Washington.

The contest pits Howard Lutnick, the billionaire investor and a co-chair of Trump’s transition team, against Scott Bessent, another billionaire financial executive who until recently had been expected to receive the Treasury nod.

Last week, however, Lutnick — who had expressed interest in joining the next administration even as he had not made his preferences clear — initiated a late play for the position, throwing the process into a state of disarray that spilled into public view over the weekend.

In an unorthodox move that reportedly frustrated some Trump allies, Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul who has emerged as a close advisor to the president-elect, backed Lutnick in a social media post on Saturday morning. Lutnick, the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, “will actually enact change,” Musk said on X, his social media platform, while Bessent, the founder of Key Square Capital Management, “is a business-as-usual choice,” he argued.

Lutnick’s endorsement was echoed by another recent but influential entrant to Trump’s inner circle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine skeptic who last week was announced as Trump’s choice to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services. In a separate post on Saturday, Kennedy claimed that bitcoin “will have no stronger advocate than” Lutnick, whose name he misspelled — making the unusual decision to signal a personal preference before Trump had revealed his own choice for the role.  

The dual encomiums from high-profile Trump allies has further complicated the Treasury race — as the president-elect has continued to delay his decision amid an internal face-off between the two purported finalists. 

The search has also extended to wild cards whose names have been floated in recent days, including Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management; Robert E. Lighthizer, who served as U.S. trade representative in Trump’s first term; and Kevin Warsh, the former Federal Reserve governor. (Larry Kudlow, Trump’s former National Economic Council director, had also been under consideration for the post, but the Fox News host pulled his name from the running on Friday.)

For his part, Bessent, who on Friday met privately with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., has claimed endorsements from several Trump allies, including Steve Bannon, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ralph Reed, the evangelical Christian leader. Bessent, 62, has also won support from a range of Wall Street heavyweights, including Dan Loeb, the New York hedge fund manager, and Stanley Druckenmiller, a former boss and mentor. 

Kudlow has also said Bessent is his “first choice” for the Treasury post, calling himself a “big fan” of the macro investor, who made his name in the financial world in the early 1990s when he shorted the British pound.

Trump’s team has declined to publicly weigh in on the president-elect’s thinking as he mulls his pick for the Treasury post. “President-Elect Trump is making decisions on who will serve in his second administration,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the transition, told JI, reusing a statement she has shared widely in recent days. “Those decisions will continue to be announced by him when they are made.”

To Bessent’s advocates, the investor is viewed as a more steadying force than Lutnick, whose recent lobbying for the Treasury job has reportedly irked Trump. Lutnick has also made some high-profile missteps as Trump’s transition co-chair, including a widely criticized TV interview days before the election where he raised questions about vaccine safety — comments he soon walked back.

Meanwhile, critics of Bessent have questioned his commitment to enacting Trump’s economic agenda, while raising doubts over his past longtime work for George Soros, the billionaire investor whose heavy funding of progressive causes has made him a GOP boogeyman. Bessent, who reportedly differed with Soros over his political views, has sought to counter such skepticism in a series of TV appearances and opinion pieces in which he has heaped praise on the president-elect.

Both Bessent and Lutnick, 63, have voiced support for the sweeping trade tariffs Trump has vowed to implement when he takes office. The two candidates have also backed cryptocurrencies — which Trump promoted during his campaign. Lutnick, however, has faced scrutiny over possible conflicts of interest, owing partly to his connection to the cryptocurrency company Tether — a client of Cantor Fitzgerald that is reportedly under federal investigation for alleged violations of illicit finance rules. Tether is reportedly used to fund Hamas.

Lutnick, a Jewish Republican who has long been committed to pro-Israel causes, has cited Trump’s Middle East policies and response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks as a key factor motivating his active support for the president-elect, whom he helped to raise millions during the election.

A spokesperson for Lutnick declined to comment on his bid to lead the Treasury.

Emily Austin, a conservative pro-Israel influencer who spoke at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership conference in September, said that she first became aware of Lutnick — who with his wife, Allison, has donated to United Hatzalah and Birthright Israel — through “his philanthropy and support for Israel.”

“But there’s so many more layers to unfold that go beyond his excellent advocacy,” Austin told Jewish Insider on Sunday, “and things domestically that are impressive to focus on too.”

The RJC said it had no comment on the Treasury race.

In contrast with his Cantor Fitzgerald rival, Bessent, who lives with his husband, John Freeman, and two children in Charleston, S.C. — where he has said he descends from French Huguenots — is seen as more of a cipher on Jewish communal issues in his home city and beyond. 

“We are not familiar with Mr. Bessent,” Brandon Fish, the director of Jewish community relations at the Charleston Jewish Federation, said in a recent email to JI. “We don’t know him — yet,” Rabbi Yossi Refson, who leads Chabad of Charleston, added in a text message.

Fred Zeidman, a prominent GOP donor and RJC board member, said that he had “never heard of Bessent” in an email to JI last week. “I know he’s never been involved in any philanthropy that I’ve been associated with.”

Other Jewish Republicans involved in pro-Israel activism and recently surveyed by JI also said they were unfamiliar with Bessent — who does not seem to have been particularly outspoken on issues including Israel and antisemitism.

A spokesperson for Bessent declined to comment on the Treasury race.

Privately, Bessent has aggressively pushed back against efforts in his industry to boycott the Jewish state. During his time as the chief investment officer at Soros Fund Management, Bessent, who launched his own company in 2015, reportedly threatened to resign as the firm weighed restricting investments in companies that do business in Israel. (The firm has denied that it considered such an approach.)

More recently, Bessent, who has known Trump for years, has alluded to concerns among investors who chose to support the president-elect amid what he called “pervasive antisemitism” in the Democratic Party.

As he courts Trump’s backing, Bessent, whose early career moves include a stint at the Olayan Group, a Saudi holding company, has sought to fine-tune his rhetoric on key national security issues that he will be tasked with overseeing if he is picked to lead the Treasury Department — such as enforcing sanctions against Iran.

Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s former Treasury secretary, has called for strengthening financial sanctions on Iran and Russia.

In a recent Fox News interview, Bessent, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, coined a new phrase to underscore his alignment with Trump on Iran — as the president-elect has indicated he will revive the punishing sanctions he imposed on the Islamic Republic in his first term. 

“I say let’s make America great again, let’s make Iran broke again,” Bessent said on Saturday.