To the editor:
Since 1965 I have been a commercial real estate broker focused on the New York metropolitan area. This has allowed me to be familiar with personalities involved in the tri-state real estate community. Among them, Donald Trump, Trump’s Middle East and Russia Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Presidents traditionally fill their cabinet with people who are politically aligned with their views and have a connection to the department they will oversee. It is therefore rare that a Democrat president has Republicans in their cabinet and visa versa. Financial contributors are usually given ambassadorial posts as a reward for their support.
Trump’s cabinet picks, among other criteria, are those who contributed to his campaign, look good on TV, are ardent Trump supporters, rarely if ever criticized or challenged anything he said, and, most of all, claim the 2020 election was lost due to fraud. They got around that last one by saying Joe Biden is president, leading one to add, “because the election was stolen.” Trump never sees background or experience in overseeing a cabinet post as necessary. You can even be opposed to promoting things that benefit the area you will oversee and still find yourself with a seat in his cabinet.
Brooke Rollins is agriculture secretary. She has no agricultural experience and is known to be opposed to farm subsidies and ethanol, which is derived from corn and added to gasoline. Regardless of what one might feel about these positions, they are viewed as detrimental to the farming community. Almost every Trump cabinet position has been filled with those who work to harm those they should seek to protect and promote policies to that end.
As commerce secretary, it is clear that Howard Lutnick drank the Trump Kool-Aid. Saying that tariffs are not a tax and that they will force companies to move their manufacturing back to the U.S. to avoid the tariffs is false. It cannot happen in real time, and as a real estate professional, Lutnick kows better. Buying land, planning and building a facility, and tooling it (probably with AI and robots) takes years and costs a fortune. Then there is no guarantee that Trump will not rescind his tariffs. Factory jobs are considered low end. Those likely to fill those positions are being rounded up and deported. This is another example of Trump not seeing the opposite negative effect of his actions.
Lutnick is destroying any credibility he may have once had. He is seen in an interview saying his mother-in-law’s Social Security check arrived late but she wasn’t worried. It will come soon, or maybe next month. Lutnick went on to say that they know how to spot the fraudsters. They are the ones who call repeatedly to complain that their check didn’t arrive.
I know nothing about Lutnick’s mother-in-law, but my guess is that she either lives in a multi-million dollar apartment he purchased for her in Manhattan or in a cottage on his 40-acre property in the Hamptons on Long Island, or in his $25 million home he lives in while in Washington, D.C.. But I promise you, she will never go hungry, with or without her social security check. Meanwhile, those who repeatedly call because their check didn’t arrive, which are characterized by Lutnick as fraudsters, may need that money to buy food, gas, and pay the rent to avoid becoming homeless. This is a clear example of those aligned with Trump being detached from the world every day in which Americans live. (Musk is another example after claiming Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.)
Trump’s maneuvering is meant to achieve one goal: permanently codifying his tax cuts, which strongly benefit the wealthy and will blow the roof off of the deficit. Senate Republicans just voted to approve it. Unless several Republicans in the House vote with the Democrats to block this, we are all screwed, MAGA too. The midterm elections are the only hope we have to restore normalcy to our government.
Frank Gunsberg
Great Barrington
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