Profile in Awfulness: Howard Lutnick

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Amid the revelations in the latest avalanche of Epstein files lurked a particularly sleazy one about Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick.

It turns out that Lutnick, who has sworn that he cut off his relationship with the pedophile in 2005, arranged to have lunch with him on his private island in 2012—four years after Epstein was convicted of procuring a child for sex.

Since the files emerged, Lutnick has been strangely silent—I say “strangely” because customarily he is incapable of shutting his piehole. I’m waiting to hear what he planned to discuss with Epstein over lunch—perhaps their shared interest in commerce?

Asked by the New York Times about his inclusion in the Epstein files, Lutnick said, “I spent zero time with him” before hanging up.

To be honest, I’d never heard of Lutnick until he joined Trump’s clown car. Learning about him has been like contracting an STD you didn’t know existed.

Shortly after his confirmation, Lutnick began popping up on television as frequently as commercials for full-body deodorant. Somebody at the White House—Trump?—must think Howard is good on TV. Actually, he’s horrible.

It’s become a cliché to call Elon Musk a Bond villain, but it’s an apter description of Lutnick, who, in Blofeldian fashion, has used his TV appearances to divulge an evil scheme or—even more inexplicably—to commit an actual crime in plain sight.

Though his on-air atrocities have been jaw-dropping to the uninitiated, they must come as no surprise to people familiar with him from his long tenure as CEO of the financial services behemoth Cantor Fitzgerald, where, according to Forbes, he became known as “the most hated man on Wall Street.”

“His multibillion-dollar empire–which includes two publicly traded companies and a privately held investment bank—is a tangle of self-dealing, with recordkeeping issues that date back decades and infighting that continues to the present day,” Forbesreported. “’The whole firm is about f——— people,’ says [a] former employee. ‘It’s about squeezing people.’”

Who does Lutnick want to fuck and squeeze now that he’s working for Trump? Canada and Mexico, for starters.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in March of last year, Howie ludicrously claimed that his senile overlord was slapping tariffs on our neighbors (and supposed allies) for one reason: to halt the flow of fentanyl into the US. When MTP host Kristin Welker pointed out that it made no sense to punish the two countries equally since Canada’s fentanyl exports are a tiny fraction of Mexico’s, he countered her argument by talking louder.

Having embarrassed himself on NBC, he moved on to Fox, where he summoned his inner Jim Cramer to offer a febrile stock tip. “I think, if you want to learn something on this show tonight: Buy Tesla,” he declared, perhaps hoping that sucking up to Elon would prevent the mercurial ketamine addict from dismantling the Commerce Department. “It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It’ll never be this cheap again.”

With this pronouncement, legal experts say, Lutnick broke the law—specifically, a 1989 ethics law barring federal officials from making such endorsements.

But since he was doing such an amazing job on TV, it was time for Lutnick to conquer a new medium: podcasts!

Appearing on an episode of “All-In” that was released one day after his triumphal Fox appearance, he revealed an ingenious plan to smoke out Social Security fraudsters: stop sending out monthly checks altogether.

“Anybody who’s been in the payment system and the processes, who knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing,” he said.

In future podcast appearances, Lutnick might want to be more cautious about calling screaming the telltale sign of a fraudster, since that appears to be his favored vocal technique. But he also might want to keep his plan to deprive Social Security recipients of their benefits a little closer to the vest, because his reveal on “All-In” didn’t go down super well.

“Social Security is a lifeline to millions of Americans,” Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor and Social Security administrator, said. “Forty percent of seniors living alone depend entirely on Social Security to keep themselves out of poverty. The cavalier disregard, utter ignorance of how so many Americans live on a day-to-day basis, is stunning, is appalling, and is a cruel-heartedness at the center of our government that we’ve never seen before.”

Mark Cuban was more succinct, asking, “Has Howard Lutnick done anything of value as Commerce Secretary?”