Billionaire Commerce Secretary Says Seniors Wouldn’t Mind Missing Social Security Checks | EUROtoday

President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick can’t cease placing his foot in his mouth.

In a podcast look Friday, Lutnick ― a billionaire Trump donor-turned-Cabinet member ― pontificated that seniors wouldn’t fear in the event that they didn’t obtain a Social Security examine one month.

“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t. She’d think something got messed up and she’ll get it next month,” Lutnick, who has an estimated internet value of $1.5 billion, mentioned on the “All-In” podcast.

He instructed that halting Social Security checks is perhaps a great way to root out folks making an attempt to defraud the system.

“A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining,” he mentioned.

“The easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing,” he claimed. “Because my mother-in-law is not calling me. Come on, your mother ― 80-year-olds, 90-year-olds ― they trust the government.”

A Bankrate survey from November discovered that 77% of present retirees depend on Social Security checks to cowl vital bills, whereas solely 15% say they don’t seem to be in any respect reliant on them.

His remarks come the identical day Leland Dudek, the short-term director of the Social Security Administration, instructed company operations could be so burdened by a court docket blocking the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s entry to delicate databases that he would simply should shut down the entire division, doubtlessly halting funds to 70 million folks.

Lutnick’s out-of-touch feedback on Social Security checks come days after a weird push he made for Americans to purchase inventory in Tesla, which has seen its shares lose about half of their worth this yr, wildly backfired.

In a Fox News look Wednesday, Lutnick urged viewers to spend money on Elon Musk’s electrical automobile firm and promised them that the inventory will “never be this cheap again.”

“I mean, who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk?” he mentioned of Trump’s adviser, who’s overseeing huge cuts to federal applications. “You gotta be kidding me.”

Tesla’s inventory dropped one other 1.7% the morning after Lutnick’s gross sales pitch.