What do you call a blatant lie? It’s a ‘Lutnick’

Trump’s Commerce secretary showers us with snake oil.

Amid the avalanche of lies coming from the White House, I asked myself who was the most dishonest person in the building – other than the World’s Biggest Liar, who’s now the president, of course.

I thought it might be Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, since she considers it her job to lie. But then I settled on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who cheerfully and enthusiastically showers snake oil on our country.

Lutnick is a booster of two of the worst economic policies of the Trump regime: large tariffs and lax regulation of cryptocurrency. He also shares Trump’s view that the McKinley era (1897-1901) was some sort of golden age for the economy. During that time, a quarter of textile workers were children under age 16, and the wealthy robber barons were making out like …. robbers.

But I’m not talking about policy differences here. I’m talking about ridiculous lies – lies so blatant that they should become known as “Lutnicks.”

The Lutnick that people are most familiar with came in March, when the Trump regime’s “Department of Government Efficiency” caused chaos in various agencies, including Social Security.

“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month,” Lutnick said. “My mother-in-law who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t. She’d think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling, and complaining.”

He wants us to think people wouldn’t mind if their Social Security check didn’t show up? Really?

Did I mention that Lutnick is extremely wealthy?

Two of Lutnick’s most outrageous Lutnicks occurred before the November election when he was co-chair of Trump’s transition team.

In late October, he flat-out denied that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would become Secretary of Health and Human Services – which Kennedy indeed became. “He’s not going to be the secretary! No!” Lutnick said on CNN, acting as if anchor Kaitlan Collins was silly to ask the question. Lutnick also pushed disinformation about vaccines causing autism, making him complicit with Trump and Kennedy in causing the deaths of Americans by spreading unfounded vaccine fears.

Lutnick said the federal government should turn over data to Kennedy to help him prove his case. “Let’s give him the data,” Lutnick said. “I think it’ll be pretty cool to give him the data. Let’s see what he comes up with. I think it’s pretty fun.”

Yep, “pretty fun.”

Lutnick’s second pre-election Lutnick was an attempt to defuse one of the Democrats’ best arguments – that Trump would adopt the radical agenda of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Lutnick insisted that if Trump won, he wouldn’t consider hiring people from Project 2025 because they were “radioactive.” That was a blatant lie – a genuine Lutnick. Some of the worst extremists now in the Trump regime are from Project 2025, including Leavitt, “border czar” Tom Homan, Russell Vought of the Office of Management and Budget, and Brendan Carr of the Federal Communications Commission.

Before the election, Lutnick was involved in another Lutnick, but this one was committed by Musk. At a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, Lutnick asked Musk about DOGE: “How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted, $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?”

Musk: “Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion.”

Lutnick: “Yeeahhh! $2 trillion!”

Noooope! Not $2 trillion! Nowhere near $2 trillion!

Lutnick and Musk are allies. As Commerce secretary, Lutnick told the public: ”Buy Tesla.” That was an obvious violation of a 1989 law prohibiting federal employees from making such endorsements. But White House lawyers don’t seem to believe in prosecuting Trump’s lawbreakers. (See: Signalgate.)

It would be easy to think Lutnick’s quote about his mother-in-law exposes him as a goof. But he’s actually a calculating and intelligent person. He led the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald to success after it lost more than half its New York employees in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. He has a deep interest in cryptocurrency and has ties to El Salvador’s crypto-friendly Nayib Bukele, who calls himself ”the world’s coolest dictator.”

So when Lutnick says things that simply aren’t true, he’s not being stupid or confused – he’s deviously trying to hoodwink the American public.

As Commerce secretary, he has produced these other Lutnicks about the economy and other topics:

• “Tariffs do not, do not, do not create inflation! … This concept is just people whining and complaining.” (It’s an economic fact that tariffs cause inflation. The people saying this are not whiners – they’re experts.)

• ”Don't buy the silly arguments that the U.S. consumer pays [tariffs]. … The businesses and the countries primarily eat the tariff." (It’s not a silly argument. It’s what Walmart and other businesses are warning about.)

• “We had the lowest inflation ever” during Trump’s first term. (Actually, it was lower under Barack Obama.)

• “There’s no one watching this TV right now who, if Elon Musk said he was going to come over to their house and help them, wouldn’t, like, cheer.” (He’s kidding, right? If Elon comes over, keep your data locked up.)

• “There’s going to be no recession in America.” (Well, we’ll see. Recent projections put the chances of a recession somewhere between a half to a third. Which is not zero percent.)

I’d like to tell you that routine lying by someone like Lutnick is harmless – that no one is fooled by it. But I won’t, because that would be a Lutnick.

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