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 BLN — and the interview didn’t go especially well. Newsweek reported:

As part of the same exchange, Lutnick added that he knows “so many more people” now that have autism, prompting the BLN 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 BLN 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 BLN 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.

Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”