{"id":569,"date":"2024-11-11T09:31:13","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T09:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/why-the-co-chair-of-trumps-transition-team-is-raising-eyebrows\/"},"modified":"2024-11-11T09:31:13","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T09:31:13","slug":"why-the-co-chair-of-trumps-transition-team-is-raising-eyebrows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/why-the-co-chair-of-trumps-transition-team-is-raising-eyebrows\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the co-chair of Trump\u2019s transition team is raising eyebrows"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In mid-August, Donald Trump<\/a> released the names of a five-member transition team<\/a>, 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\u2019s willingness to keep matters within the family: Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were part of the lineup<\/a>, despite their lack of qualifications, which struck many observers as odd.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> is certainly known on Wall Street, it\u2019s likely that most Americans are not familiar with him or his message.<\/p>\n

That might soon change.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, for example, Lutnick spoke to NBC News\u2019 Vaughn Hillyard<\/a> and suggested that some of Trump\u2019s high-profile critics from his own former team \u2014 including retired Gens. John Kelly and James Mattis \u2014 might\u2019ve committed \u201ctreason\u201d<\/a> during their tenure in the administration. Lutnick added that they were \u201cDemocrat [sic<\/em>] generals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon after, the billionaire spoke at Trump\u2019s hate-filled Madison Square Garden event<\/a>, where he talked about eliminating all income taxes and touted Trump\u2019s candidacy as necessary to \u201ccrush jihad<\/a>.\u201d (Presumably, the Republican campaign, already hoping Muslim voters will overlook Trump\u2019s years of ugly Islamophobia and discrimination against Muslim Americans<\/a>, didn\u2019t welcome the rhetoric.)<\/p>\n

Common sense might\u2019ve suggested that the Trump campaign keep Lutnick away from microphones for a while, but with just days remaining before Election Day 2024<\/a>, the co-chair of Trump\u2019s transition team instead appeared on BLN \u2014 and the interview didn\u2019t go especially well. Newsweek reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Donald Trump transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick questioned the safety of vaccines while speaking with BLN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday night. \u2018Vaccines are safe,\u2019 Collins said, while talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s self-reported possibility of being \u2018promised\u2019 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. \u2018Why do you think vaccines are safe,\u2019 Lutnick shot back, adding, \u2018there\u2019s no product liability anymore.\u2019<\/p>\n

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As part of the same exchange, Lutnick added that he knows \u201cso many more people\u201d now that have autism, prompting the BLN host to emphasize the reality that \u201cvaccines don\u2019t cause autism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wait, it gets worse.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, 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\u00a0include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.<\/p>\n

Given Kennedy\u2019s bizarre ideas and worldview<\/a>, that\u2019s a rather terrifying prospect \u2014 even Trump\u2019s former surgeon general is concerned<\/a> \u2014 though Lutnick defended the idea.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Kennedy] wants the data, so he can say, \u2018These things are unsafe,\u2019\u201d the billionaire megadonor argued during his BLN appearance. \u201cHe says, \u2018If you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I\u2019ll take on the data and show that it\u2019s not safe. And then if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off, off of the market.\u2019 So, that\u2019s his point.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s<\/em> the plan? Trump will put an unqualified conspiracy theorist in a position of enormous power, and that \u2014 according to the handpicked co-chair of Trump\u2019s transition team \u2014 might lead to vaccines being pulled from pharmacy shelves?<\/p>\n

This is, as New York magazine\u2019s Jon Chait noted<\/a>, \u201ca glimpse into a public-health nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every day, the stakes in the 2024 presidential race get higher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Steve Benen<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of\u00a0MaddowBlog\u00a0and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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\u2019s willingness to keep matters within the family: Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were part of the lineup, despite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}