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more perfect union
Trump's Billionaire Commerce Secretary: Only 'Fraudsters' Will Complain If Social Security Checks Don't Arrive
One group noted who would actually complain: "Someone who depends on Social Security to buy groceries. Someone who depends on Social Security to pay rent. Someone who depends on Social Security to survive."
Mar 21, 2025
As U.S. President Donald Trump's temporary leader of the Social Security Administration threatened to shut down the agency over an unfavorable court ruling on Friday, the billionaire commerce secretary came under fire for suggesting that only "fraudsters" will complain if they don't get their earned benefits.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on All-In—a podcast hosted by "four billionaire besties"—on Thursday. A brief clip of his interview, which lasted an hour and 45 minutes, made the rounds on social media Friday.
Lutnick told two of the hosts that if the SSA didn't send out checks this month, his 94-year-old mother-in-law "wouldn't call and complain," but "a fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling, and complaining."
Critics were quick to point out Lutnick's wealth. As More Perfect Union posted, "His net worth is estimated at $2 billion."
Richard Phillips, pensions and tax policy director for U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.),
called the commerce secretary's comments "shameful."
"Nearly 40% of seniors rely on Social Security for a majority of their income and nearly 1 in 7 rely on it for more than 90% of their income," according to Phillips. "These people would call due to missing checks because their very survival depends on it."
The watchdog group Public Citizen similarly pushed back on social media, saying: "You know who actually makes the loudest noise? Someone who depends on Social Security to buy groceries. Someone who depends on Social Security to pay rent. Someone who depends on Social Security to survive. But billionaires like Howard Lutnick don't care about those people."
Groundwork Collaborative chief of policy and advocacy Alex Jacquez said in a statement that "the Trump administration just told seniors that they should shut up and sit down if they don't receive their Social Security checks on time. The real 'fraudsters' are Trump's out-of-touch billionaire donors and advisers denying seniors their hard-earned benefits to pay for their next tax giveaway."
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union for federal workers, also tied Lutnick's remarks to Republican tax ambitions—as well as a broader attack on the federal bureaucracy by Trump and the de facto leader of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), billionaire Elon Musk.
"First, Elon called Social Security a 'Ponzi scheme' and said we need to eliminate it," Kelley said. "Then DOGE started trying to cut SSA staff. Now Lutnick says 'don't complain' when the payments stop. They are taking money from working-class people in order to give it to their rich friends."
As Common Dreams reported earlier Friday, acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Leland Dudek is threatening to shut down the agency in response to a federal judge's Thursday order blocking DOGE's SSA "data grab." The Washington Post later revealed that the official "is consulting with agency lawyers and the Justice Department" about the possible shutdown.
Some political observers see the Republican administration's attacks on the SSA—and the rest of the federal government—as a major opportunity for the Democratic Party, which has minorities in both chambers of Congress.
"If Dems have any strategic mojo left, they will clip this and play it on a nonstop television ad loop in the two Florida districts holding special congressional elections," Helaine Olen of the American Economic Liberties Project said about the Lutnick interview. "Seniors will rightly whine when their checks don't show up."
Already, some seniors have publicly shared stories of benefits incorrectly shut off since Trump took office, and some congressional Democrats are taking aim at his administration. Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), a longtime SSA defender who has framed the DOGE assault as a push toward privatization, posted the commerce secretary's video on social media.
"Trump and Musk's cuts to the Social Security Administration could lead to the delay, denial, and disruption of your EARNED BENEFITS," Larson said Friday. "For 40% of our seniors, Social Security is the only income they have. They can't just wait for their next check."
Also responding to the clip, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said, "They are getting ready to destroy Social Security. Because the billionaires don't need it. Prepping the ground here by shaming people who dare complain if their Social Security check disappears."
The Social Security comments aren't the only reason the commerce secretary is facing intense criticism this week. On Wednesday, he told viewers of Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime" to buy stock in Musk's electric vehicle maker, Tesla. One watchdog leader noted that Lutnick "conveniently forgot to mention his family business empire holds nearly $840 million in the company."
The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center on Friday filed a complaint with the Office of Government Ethics and an ethics official at the U.S. Department of Commerce, urging them to investigate Lutnick's comments about Tesla stock—which has been crashing due to protests of the company resulting from Musk's work for the Trump administration.
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Trump Stages Tesla Car Show at White House After Berating Americans for Boycotting Musk
"While Trump cuts programs you need to live, he's turning the White House into a car dealership to advertise his unelected shadow president's failing company," said one critic.
Mar 11, 2025
With Tesla's stock plummeting since the electric carmaker's CEO, Elon Musk, arrived in Washington, D.C. and began slashing federal jobs and programs, U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday was intent on helping his "special government employee" as he spent part of the afternoon inspecting five of the company's cars on the White House lawn.
The president declared the cars "beautiful" and expressed hope that his purchase of a Tesla will help the company's financial position.
More Perfect Union, the labor-focused media organization, cast doubt on Musk's claim that he will double production due to the president's interest, "given declining demand for his cars."
"This is just two corrupt oligarchs scratching each other's backs," said the group.
He also joined Musk in condemning protests that have broken out at Tesla dealerships over the CEO's work at the Trump-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has pushed to dismantle agencies across the federal government and overseen the firing of about 30,000 federal employees.
"It's really terrible that there's so much violence being perpetrated against people at Tesla, Tesla supporters, Tesla owners, Tesla stores" said Musk after thanking Trump for displaying the cars. "These are innocent people who have done nothing wrong."
There have been at least 10 acts of vandalism reported against Tesla vehicles, charging stations, and dealerships in recent weeks as outrage has grown over the unelected Musk's enormous influence at the White House. No injuries have been reported in any of the incidents.
Shares of the company plummeted 15% on Monday—Tesla's worst day in four and a half years. Since peaking in mid-December after Musk poured nearly $300 million into Trump's election campaign, Tesla's shares have lost more than 50% of their value and the company has lost more than $800 billion.
Before parading Tesla's products in front of the press at the White House, the president took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to lambast "Radical Left Lunatics" for "trying to illegally and collusively boycott" his ally and benefactor's company.
"Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help make America great again?" asked Trump.
Podcast host Matt Bernstein called the scene at the White House "jaw-dropping."
"While Trump cuts programs you need to live, he's turning the White House into a car dealership to advertise his unelected shadow president's failing company," said Bernstein. "Dystopian levels of corruption."
At the White House, the president also suggested he may label any attacks against Musk's dealerships as domestic terrorism.
"Those people are going to go through a big problem when we catch them," said Trump. "And let me tell you, you do it to Tesla, and you do it to any company, we're going to catch you and you're going to go through hell."
Murtaza Hussain of Drop Site News projected that with the Trump administration pushing to deport visa holders who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests—with at least one abducted by immigration agents and detained in recent days—"we're maybe two years away from people deported for terrorism for keying a Tesla."
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What Can Be Done About the Left’s Diminished DNC Presence?
The recent race for DNC chair raises questions about how the progressive wing of the party can and should move forward toward 2028.
Feb 09, 2025
Just before starting to write my lament about what a dramatic step backward the recent campaign for Democratic National Committee chair had been, I opened an Our Revolution email that told me, “We beat back the party establishment at the DNC.”
Now Our Revolution being a direct organizational descendent of the 2020 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and me having been a 2016 Sanders convention delegate, I feel pretty confident that our ideas of who “we” means are pretty much the same. So what accounts for the widely divergent takes?
For those who haven’t been following this, Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin was just elected to lead the DNC for the next four years, defeating Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler by a 246.5–134.5 vote margin. There was no contested election four years ago, because by tradition a just-elected president selects the new chair; contested elections generally follow defeats. In the last one, in 2017, former Obama administration Secretary of Labor Tom Perez won the job, beating Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison in a second round of voting, 235--200.
At the moment there is no one obviously positioned to take up the Sanders’ mantle in the 2028 presidential campaign.
Ellison’s candidacy came in the wake of his having been just the second member of Congress to support Sanders in the prior year’s presidential primaries, and the fact that Sanders people harbored serious grievances with the DNC over its perceived favoritism for the ultimate nominee, Hillary Clinton, lent a distinct edge to the election, bringing it considerably more buzz than the one that just occurred. At the time, former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, a vociferous opponent of Sanders’ run—who had once declared, “The most effective thing liberals and progressives can do to advance our public policy goals... is to help Clinton win our nomination early in the year”—now thought there was “a great deal to be said for putting an active Sanders supporter in there,” so as to clear the air “of suspicions and paranoia.” But Clinton and Barack Obama apparently didn’t think so, and Clinton’s past Obama cabinet colleague, Perez, took up the torch in a race that produced a level of grassroots involvement seldom if ever before seen in this contest.
Although the office is traditionally considered organizational rather than ideological and the 2017 candidates did run on those issues, the underlying political differences were obvious to all. This time around, the race was generally understood to involve little if any political disagreement on the issues. By way of explaining its support for new party chair Martin, Our Revolution characterized runner-up Wikler, as “an establishment candidate backed by Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and Chuck Schumer, and bankrolled by the billionaire class.” We understand that election campaigns are about sharpening the perception of differences between the candidates, but still this seems a rather thin, flimsy basis for hailing the vote as an anti-establishment triumph, given that Martin has publicly stated that he doesn’t want the party to take money from "those bad billionaires" only from "good billionaires;”and one of the two billionaires who gave a quarter million dollars to Wikler’s campaign was George Soros—probably the DNC’s model “good billionaire.” Besides Musk/Bezos/Zuckerberg probably aren’t thinking of donating anyhow. Oh, and Chuck Schumer actually supported Ellison eight years ago.
Actually, “we” did have a horse in the race—2020 Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir. Shakir, who has been running a nonprofit news organization called More Perfect Union, dedicated to “building power for the working class,” argued that Democrats needed a pitch for building a pro-worker economy to go with their criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy proposals. His viewpoint presented a serious alternative to that of Martin, who told a candidates forum that “we’ve got the right message... What we need to do is connect it back with the voters,”—seemingly a tough position to maintain following an election in which NBC’s 20-state exit polling showed the majority of voters with annual household incomes under $100,000 voting Republican, while the majority of those from over-$100,000 households voted Democrat. But even though Shakir was a DNC member and thereby able to get the 40 signatures of committee members needed to run, he entered the race far too late to be taken for a serious contender and ultimately received but two votes.
Mind you, none of this critique comes as a criticism of the work of the two state party chairs who were the principal contenders. Martin touts the fact that Democrats have won every statewide election in Minnesota in the 14 years that he has chaired the party, and anyone who understands the effort that goes into political campaign work can only admire that achievement. Nor is Our Revolution to be criticized for taking the time to discern what they thought would be the best possible option in a not terribly exciting race that was nevertheless of some importance.
At the same time it’s hard not to regret the diminished DNC presence of the “we” that Our Revolution spoke of, after “we” legitimately contended for power in the last contested election. Certainly this lack of interest was in no small part a consequence of the extraordinary circumstances that produced a presidential nominee who had not gone before the voters in a single primary—for the first time since Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
More importantly, it raises a serious question for those of us who believe that the structure and history of the American political system require the left’s engagement in the Democratic Party—uncomfortable and unpleasant as that may be at times. As the social scientists like to say, politics abhors a vacuum, and absent a national Democratic Party presence for the perspective that motivated the Sanders campaigns, people seeking action on the big questions on the big stage may start to look elsewhere. And elsewhere always looms the possibility of the cul-de-sac of yet of another third party candidacy that holds interesting conventions and debates, but ultimately receives only a small share of the vote, but a large share of the blame for the election of a Republican president.
At the moment there is no one obviously positioned to take up the Sanders’ mantle in the 2028 presidential campaign. But we may have to make it our business to find one.
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