Trump’s cronies don’t live in our universe
To the Editor:
Every so often, some politician will say something so arrogant and tone-deaf as to be compared to Marie Antoinette, the doomed queen who supposedly said of France’s starving peasants, “Then let them eat cake.”
There has never been any evidence that she said anything like that and no serious historian believes she did.
What Howard Lutnick indisputably did say sounds worse.
Lutnick, President Trump’s secretary of commerce, doesn’t think people should complain if their Social Security checks happen to go missing on account of what Elon Musk, the unelected co-president, has done to disable the Social Security Administration (SSA).
“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," he said on a podcast.
Related Items
Lying about Social Security isn’t the answer
It’s time to stand against hate
Trump agenda hurts the working man
Thank God we elected Trump
In the context of the conversation, Lutnick seemed to be implying that those who did complain would likely be drawing benefits fraudulently.
According to the SSA, more than 7 million Americans 65 and older receive at least 90% of their income from Social Security. Some have no other resource.
It’s unlikely that Lutnick’s mother-in-law would miss a meal or run out of medicine on account of a month’s missing deposit. What’s significant and hard to accept is that anyone in his position could be so insensitive to the millions of Americans who don’t have a rich son-in-law to save them in such an emergency.
It’s just as significant that the president hasn’t called him on the carpet to make him apologize.
It’s like Mitt Romney’s foot-in-mouth moment.
That was his inaccurate remark, to an audience of millionaires during his 2012 presidential campaign, that 47% of Americans don’t pay taxes. It was not his job, he said, “to worry about those people.”
“Even Marie Antoinette thought the peasants deserved cake,” commented an article in Forbes.
But Romney’s off the hook now.
Lutnick takes his place.
Martin Dyckman
Asheville
