Social Security is a Joke to Trump and His Team
The vast majority of retirees are heavily dependent on their Social Security checks. In many cases Social Security is the bulk of their retirement income. Therefore, if they miss a check, it is a really big deal. They can’t pay for their food, rent, mortgage, or other necessities.
But apparently that is not the case for the people Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick knows. On a podcast last week, he said that only people committing fraud would complain if they miss a Social Security check. He pointed out that his 94-year-old mother-in-law wouldn’t say anything about missing her Social Security check.
While I don’t know anything about Lutnick’s mother-in-law’s finances, we do know that she has a billionaire for a son-in-law. That puts her way ahead of almost every other Social Security beneficiary, at least assuming that Lutnick is not a total asshole and would help her pay her bills.
Regardless of the circumstances of Lutnick’s mother-in-law, it speaks volumes about the contempt that Trump and his cabinet have for the working class people that voted for him in overwhelming numbers. Missing a Social Security check would not be a joke to them either presently, or when they expect to be getting benefits some years down the road.
If a member of Biden’s cabinet had shown similar contempt for ordinary working people, they would almost certainly be out of the cabinet the same day. Either that, or they would be making the rounds of every news outlet in the country showing contrition and explaining how their comments did not reflect their real views.
Obviously, Trump does not care that one of the most prominent members of his cabinet is openly contemptuous of the people who voted from him. The media also apparently does not consider this fact to be a major issue, since Lutnick’s comments have received relatively little attention.
By contrast, when President Biden made a mangled comment about a racist comedian speaking at a Trump rally, which could have been taken as a degrading attack on Trump voters, it was front page news the next day in the New York Times. I guess the idea is that everyone knows that Trump has contempt for his voters, so when someone in his cabinet expresses this contempt openly, it is not news.
In any case, Lutnick’s comment is a useful reminder that Trump and Republicans in Congress are anxiously looking at cutting the programs — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — that the vast majority of Americans depend upon. The Republicans and their billionaire friends don’t need these programs, so to them major cuts are just a joke.
What Lutnick, Musk, and the rest of the gang care about is the big tax cuts Trump has promised them. And tax cuts to the rich looks to be at least one promise where Donald Trump is likely to deliver.
This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.
The post Social Security is a Joke to Trump and His Team appeared first on CounterPunch.org.