In mid-August, Donald Trump released the names of a five-member transition team, which would be responsible for helping make post-election plans in the event that he wins. The list generated headlines because of the former president’s willingness to keep matters within the family: Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were part of the lineup, despite their lack of qualifications, which struck many observers as odd.
But the one person on the five-member transition team with the lowest public profile was Howard Lutnick, the CEO of a financial services firm called Cantor Fitzgerald. While the billionaire megadonor is certainly known on Wall Street, it’s likely that most Americans are not familiar with him or his message.
That might soon change.
Over the weekend, for example, Lutnick spoke to NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard and suggested that some of Trump’s high-profile critics from his own former team — including retired Gens. John Kelly and James Mattis — might’ve committed “treason” during their tenure in the administration. Lutnick added that they were “Democrat [sic] generals.”
Soon after, the billionaire spoke at Trump’s hate-filled Madison Square Garden event, where he talked about eliminating all income taxes and touted Trump’s candidacy as necessary to “crush jihad.” (Presumably, the Republican campaign, already hoping Muslim voters will overlook Trump’s years of ugly Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslim Americans, didn’t welcome the rhetoric.)
Common sense might’ve suggested that the Trump campaign keep Lutnick away from microphones for a while, but with just days remaining before Election Day 2024, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team instead appeared on CNN — and the interview didn’t go especially well. Newsweek reported:
Donald Trump transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick questioned the safety of vaccines while speaking with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday night. ‘Vaccines are safe,’ Collins said, while talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s self-reported possibility of being ‘promised’ by the former president to head the Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture if Trump wins the 2024 election. ‘Why do you think vaccines are safe,’ Lutnick shot back, adding, ‘there’s no product liability anymore.’
As part of the same exchange, Lutnick added that he knows “so many more people” now that have autism, prompting the CNN host to emphasize the reality that “vaccines don’t cause autism.”
Wait, it gets worse.
Failed independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed this week that he received a promise from Trump about a role in his possible second term. As my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim noted, the fringe conspiracy theorist expects to have control of both the U.S. Agriculture Department and the Department of Health and Human Services and the agencies under its purview, which include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
Given Kennedy’s bizarre ideas and worldview, that’s a rather terrifying prospect — even Trump’s former surgeon general is concerned — though Lutnick defended the idea.
“[Kennedy] wants the data, so he can say, ‘These things are unsafe,’” the billionaire megadonor argued during his CNN appearance. “He says, ‘If you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe. And then if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off, off of the market.’ So, that’s his point.”
That’s the plan? Trump will put an unqualified conspiracy theorist in a position of enormous power, and that — according to the handpicked co-chair of Trump’s transition team — might lead to vaccines being pulled from pharmacy shelves?
This is, as New York magazine’s Jon Chait noted, “a glimpse into a public-health nightmare.”
Every day, the stakes in the 2024 presidential race get higher.