At a campaign fundraising dinner on Oct. 24 at the New York restaurant Sadelle’s, Howard Lutnick, the billionaire chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, told a crowd of about two dozen wealthy donors that he needs their help filling thousands of political jobs if Donald Trump returns to the White House.
Lutnick, who addressed the crowd during the dinner’s cocktail hour, said he wanted résumés from anyone they knew for possible positions. Those at the meeting included the New York Jets owner, Woody Johnson, among others.
The co-chair of Trump’s presidential transition team, Lutnick has burst onto the scene in recent weeks with his activist recruiting approach and willingness to talk about nearly all of it in public.
This has startled some Trump allies, who believe Lutnick should be keeping a lower profile before all the votes have been counted and especially before Trump has weighed in on key personnel decisions.
One lobbyist who attended the New York dinner said that Lutnick’s approach felt like overkill and that the Wall Street executive was operating like a one-man human-resources department. Others close to Trump are wary of Lutnick’s ties to New York’s financial elite, worrying that he will persuade the former president to hire the kind of Wall Street veterans who sought to undermine some of Trump’s policy moves during his first term, such as steep tariffs on imports.
Despite that baggage, Lutnick has managed to win over many of Trump’s most-trusted allies, in part by showing fealty to the core tenets of Trumpism in his many television interviews.

Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., who serves as an honorary co-chair of the Trump transition team and has said he would block “bad actors” from getting jobs in his father’s administration, praised Lutnick’s approach.

“Howard’s not a regular Wall Street guy—he’s a real MAGA guy. Have you heard him talk about tariffs? Have you heard him talk about shredding the deep state bureaucracy? He’s one of us,” he said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

The Trump campaign also backed Lutnick in a statement to the Journal.

“Howard Lutnick has volunteered his time to co-chair the Trump-Vance transition. In this role he is gathering a broad cross-section of policy experts and talented leaders for President Trump to choose from for his administration after the election,” a senior Trump campaign adviser said.

Lutnick has some top Trump allies in his ear. He has spoken with Elon Musk, who is working hard to try to help Trump win the election and has expressed a plan to help the new administration completely revamp and streamline the government, potentially cutting the budget by $2 trillion a year.
In their conversations, Musk and Lutnick have talked about ways to cut government spending, a person familiar with the exchange said.

Lutnick has also been in frequent contact with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who hasn’t played a visible role in the 2024 election but was a main player in Trump’s 2016 transition team. Kushner has been advising Lutnick on potential Trump hires, according to people familiar with the conversations. Lutnick has called Kushner for references when he recognizes certain hires who worked with Trump’s son-in-law in the last administration.

Kushner has guided Lutnick on how to proceed with the hiring process if Trump wins. He advised Lutnick to give Trump three or four options for every position and let the former president make the final decision on who is best to serve.

Lutnick confirmed in an October interview with the independent journalist Michael Tracey, that Kushner is “actively helping” him on the transition front but didn’t provide further details.
Lutnick’s team has asked for lists of people working for the campaign and Trump-affiliated outside groups so it can consider them for jobs in a Trump administration if he wins, according to people familiar with the matter. Presidents have to fill roughly 4,000 politically appointed positions upon taking office. More than 1,000 of those positions require Senate confirmation.

Lutnick disclosed several days ago in a CNN interview that he had recently spoken for more than two hours with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. During the CNN interview, Lutnick questioned whether vaccines are safe, echoing Kennedy’s widely debunked position and sparking backlash from public health officials.
Lutnick later clarified in a social-media post that he, his wife and his children had been vaccinated, but said he wants to share federal data with Kennedy so he can investigate vaccine safety. Kennedy, Lutnick said, won’t lead the Department of Health and Human Services if Trump wins.

Lutnick also said Musk likely wouldn’t get a job in a Trump administration because he can’t sell his companies. Instead, he said Musk would help from the outside by writing software for the government. (Musk has said publicly that he plans to run something called the Department of Government Efficiency, though few details have been released about how this would work or what his actual role would be.)

The Lutnick CNN interview annoyed some Trump’s allies, who said that Lutnick’s comments created an unnecessary distraction days before the election and that he spoke too freely about personnel decisions that Trump hasn’t yet weighed in on.
Lutnick is consulting some of the country’s most prominent executives as he builds out his personnel database. Lutnick has spoken with the Blackstone chief executive officer and Trump ally, Steve Schwarzman, to assist in the personnel recruitment process, according to a person familiar with the conversations. A spokeswoman for Blackstone didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Others who have spoken with Lutnick include Harold Hamm, executive chairman of Continental Resources, and the political commentator Tucker Carlson. Lutnick said in a television interview last month that he has had conversations about the transition with the likes of Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan and the brokerage firm founder Charles Schwab.
Many of Lutnick’s meetings feature the Cantor CEO calling himself a “mosaic painter” and discussing his plans to present to Trump a variety of personnel options for each position, according to a person familiar with the conversations. He has reaffirmed to potential Trump hires that he isn’t the one making the final decision on who is selected to work in what would be a second administration.

Lutnick told the Journal in a recent interview that his experience running Cantor Fitzgerald, which hired thousands of employees after most of its New York staff was killed on Sept. 11, 2001, makes him uniquely suited for his transition job.
While Trump had a number of notable economic achievements during his first term, his White House was marked by constant infighting between his economic advisers. Lutnick’s Wall Street connections have some Trump advisers nervous that he could recruit high-powered executives who might not share the former president’s affinity for imposing tariffs on trading partners and pulling back from multilateral international agreements.
But Lutnick has taken pains to prove to Trump that he isn’t the kind of “globalist” financial executive that many of the former president’s allies detest. He has made clear in interviews that he is on the hunt for loyalists who won’t stand in the way of Trump’s agenda, and he has enthusiastically touted Trump’s plans for a suite of stiff tariffs on U.S. imports.
“Donald Trump,” Lutnick said during a speech at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden last month, “is going to build the greatest team to ever walk into government.”

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-world-rfk-kennedy-peeved-transition-co-chair-howard-lutnick-cnn-interview

THE CO-CHAIR OF DONALD TRUMP’S TRANSITION TEAM turned heads this week when he questioned vaccines and discussed the controversy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s role in a future administration.

Inside Trump world, that appearance by Howard Lutnick on CNN set off fireworks as well.

Allies of Kennedy were left displeased that Lutnick had stated on air that the Democratic presidential candidate-turned-MAGA disciple would not be getting a cabinet level post. Meanwhile, Trump allies felt that Lutnick had freelanced too much by suggesting the ex-president could be okay with banning long-approved vaccines. They were similarly dismayed that Lutnick had decided to casually discuss a presidential transition and appointees just six days before Election Day, worried that it sent the wrong message to the public.

Their displeasure morphed into pain when they saw the unflattering headlines the next day in the New York Post and the New York Times, which hold preeminent places in the mind of Trump and therefore the campaign. Now, the knives are coming out for Lutnick, a billionaire financier whose business acumen outmatches his Trump world emotional IQ.

>>1358939
>Blackstone
Lmfao.

Makes sense as an asshole should be stuffed with shit.

>>1358978
Steve Schwarzman is no joke

>>1358935
Oh well. Too late now!

>>1358993
Trump needs to tighten his leash on his wall street billionaires.

I will never cease to amaze me that a celebrity billionaire convinced 70 million people to that he understands workers more than everyone else. My perception of America has been fried for at least the next 4 decades.

>>1358939
>Lutnick also said Musk likely wouldn’t get a job in a Trump administration because he can’t sell his companies. Instead, he said Musk would help from the outside by writing software for the government.
No-bid contracts are frowned upon for a very good reason.

I really don't understand. These are the people that right wingers on here hate, why is Trump working with them?

>>1359036
Almost like Trump is a grifter with no actual ideology beyond making himself rich and powerful.

>>1358995
Or go to jail after losing the election. Whatever works

>>1359036
Did you not notice the 5 billionaires in his cabinet last time?
>Jared
>Ivanka
>Wilbur Ross
>Mnuchin
>Betsy DeVos

>>1359083
I'm a right winger, I'm not very bright.

>>1359093
Half of your post was not lying. That's above average for you I suppose

>>1359135
Are you keeping score?

>>1359135
The height of wittiness you can get from a right winger.

>>1359074
Billionaires don't go to jail

>Howard Lutnick
This guy is going to be White House Chief of Staff if Trump wins

>>1359305
Bernie Madoff did although admittedly that was a long time ago now

>>1358935
>Pasting a WSJ article
Very good thread