Why Trump’s transition team co-chair raises eyebrows

In mid-August, Donald Trump announced the names five-person transition teamwho would be responsible for helping prepare post-election plans in the event he wins. The list made headlines for the former president’s desire to keep things private: Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were part of the squaddespite having no qualifications, which many observers found strange.

But the only person on the five-person transition team with the lowest public profile was Howard Lutnick, CEO of a financial services firm called Cantor Fitzgerald. While a billionaire megadonor is certainly famous on Wall Street, most Americans probably don’t know him or his message.

This may change soon.

On the weekend, for example, Lutnick spoke with NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard and suggested that some of Trump’s high-profile critics on his own team – including retired Gen. John Kelly and James Mattis – could have committed “betrayal” during their tenure in the administration. Lutnick added that they were “Democrats (sic) generals.”

Shortly thereafter, the billionaire spoke at Trump’s hate-filled event at Madison Square Garden, where he talked about eliminating all income taxes and touted Trump’s candidacy as essential to “crush jihad” (Probably the Republican campaign, already hoping that Muslim voters will do so they will turn a blind eye to Trump’s years of terrible Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslim AmericansI didn’t like this rhetoric.)

Common sense might suggest that the Trump campaign would keep Lutnick off the microphone for a while, but just days before the 2024 election, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team appeared on CNN – and the interview didn’t go particularly well. Newsweek reported.: :

Donald Trump’s transition team co-chairman Howard Lutnick questioned the safety of vaccines during a conversation with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday evening. “Vaccines are safe,” Collins said, speaking about how Robert F. Kennedy Jr., by his own admission, could have been given the former president’s “promised” job as head of the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture if Trump wins the election 2024. “Why do you think vaccines are safe,” Lutnick shot back, adding, “there is no product liability anymore.”

In the same exchange, Lutnick added that he now knows “a lot more people” with autism, prompting the CNN host to emphasize the fact that “vaccines don’t cause autism.”

Wait, it’s getting worse.

Failed independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this week that he had received a promise from Trump about a role in his possible second term. As my MSNBC colleague – Clarissa-Jan Lim notedthis extreme conspiracy theorist expects to take control of both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services and their subordinate agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health.

Considering Kennedy weird ideas and worldviewit’s even a terrifying prospect Trump’s former surgeon general is concerned — although Lutnick defended this idea.

“(Kennedy) wants the data so he can say, ‘These things are dangerous,'” the billionaire megadonor argued during an appearance on CNN. “He says: If you give me data, I just want data, and I will take it and show it that it is not secure. And then if you pursue product liability, the companies will immediately take these vaccines off the market.” That’s what he’s about.”