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Borowitz Report's Traitor of the Week: Howard Lutnick
Link: https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/traitor-of-the-week-quisling-no-6 (for paid subscribers only)
Excerpted from Borowitz's Sunday Read column, which is his longer, non-satirical essay once per week. If anyone has an archived (no paywall) link please post it below.
To be honest, I had never heard of Howard Lutnick until Trump nominated him as Commerce Secretary. Being introduced to him has been like contracting an STD you didn’t know existed. Since his confirmation, Lutnick has been popping up on television as frequently as commercials for full-body deodorant. Somebody at the White House—Trump?—must think Howard is good on TV. Actually, he’s horrible.
It’s become a cliché to call Elon Musk a Bond villain, but it’s an apter description of Lutnick, who, in Blofeldian fashion, has used his TV appearances to divulge an evil scheme or—even more inexplicably—to commit an actual crime in plain sight. Though his on-air atrocities have been jaw-dropping to the uninitiated, they must come as no surprise to people familiar with him from his long tenure as CEO of the financial services behemoth Cantor Fitzgerald, where, according to Forbes, he became known as “the most hated man on Wall Street.”
“His multibillion-dollar empire–which includes two publicly traded companies and a privately held investment bank—is a tangle of self-dealing, with recordkeeping issues that date back decades and infighting that continues to the present day,” Forbes reported. “’The whole firm is about f——— people,’ says [a] former employee. ‘It’s about squeezing people.’”
Who does Lutnick want to fuck and squeeze now that he’s working for Trump? Canada and Mexico, for starters. Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on March 9, Howie ludicrously claimed that his senile overlord was slapping tariffs on our neighbors (and supposed allies) for one reason: to halt the flow of fentanyl into the US. When MTP host Kristin Welker pointed out that it made no sense to punish the two countries equally since Canada’s fentanyl exports are a tiny fraction of Mexico’s, he countered her argument by talking louder.
... snip ...
Appearing on an episode of “All-In” that was released one day after his triumphal Fox appearance, he revealed an ingenious plan to smoke out Social Security fraudsters: stop sending out monthly checks altogether. “Anybody who’s been in the payment system and the processes, who knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing,” he said.
In future podcast appearances, Lutnick might want to be more cautious about calling screaming the telltale sign of a fraudster, since that appears to be his favored vocal technique. But he also might want to keep his plan to deprive Social Security recipients of their benefits a little closer to the vest, because his reveal on “All-In” didn’t go down super well.
- more at link (paid subscribers only) -
It’s become a cliché to call Elon Musk a Bond villain, but it’s an apter description of Lutnick, who, in Blofeldian fashion, has used his TV appearances to divulge an evil scheme or—even more inexplicably—to commit an actual crime in plain sight. Though his on-air atrocities have been jaw-dropping to the uninitiated, they must come as no surprise to people familiar with him from his long tenure as CEO of the financial services behemoth Cantor Fitzgerald, where, according to Forbes, he became known as “the most hated man on Wall Street.”
“His multibillion-dollar empire–which includes two publicly traded companies and a privately held investment bank—is a tangle of self-dealing, with recordkeeping issues that date back decades and infighting that continues to the present day,” Forbes reported. “’The whole firm is about f——— people,’ says [a] former employee. ‘It’s about squeezing people.’”
Who does Lutnick want to fuck and squeeze now that he’s working for Trump? Canada and Mexico, for starters. Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on March 9, Howie ludicrously claimed that his senile overlord was slapping tariffs on our neighbors (and supposed allies) for one reason: to halt the flow of fentanyl into the US. When MTP host Kristin Welker pointed out that it made no sense to punish the two countries equally since Canada’s fentanyl exports are a tiny fraction of Mexico’s, he countered her argument by talking louder.
... snip ...
Appearing on an episode of “All-In” that was released one day after his triumphal Fox appearance, he revealed an ingenious plan to smoke out Social Security fraudsters: stop sending out monthly checks altogether. “Anybody who’s been in the payment system and the processes, who knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing,” he said.
In future podcast appearances, Lutnick might want to be more cautious about calling screaming the telltale sign of a fraudster, since that appears to be his favored vocal technique. But he also might want to keep his plan to deprive Social Security recipients of their benefits a little closer to the vest, because his reveal on “All-In” didn’t go down super well.
Howard Lutnick is truly detestable, as Borowitz makes clear in this column. Since Lutnick is talking the loudest, he must be the biggest fraud, according to his own description.
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