just shut up and take it

The inhumanity of these people is staggering.

Last Thursday, Donald Trump's Commerce Secretary — a Wall Street billionaire named Howard Lutnick, who got the job after raising millions for Trump's 2020 and 2024 campaigns — said the following things:

"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."

"The easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing."

"A fraudster always makes the loudest noise — screaming, yelling, and complaining."

"My mother-in-law's not calling. Come on, your mother, 80-year-olds, 90-year-olds — they trust the government."

By that "logic," if you're having a heart attack, crying out in pain or calling 911 only proves you're faking it. Funny, we don't remember Lutnick and the rest of the billionaire class keeping their mouths shut whenever some "radical" in Congress has proposed making them pay their fair share in taxes. Apparently "trust the government" is just for us little people.

(And nevermind that for decades, right-wing politicians have been actively sowing distrust in the federal government while simultaneously corrupting it for the benefit of billionaires and Big Business. They have created a vicious cycle that leaves the government less and less able to help everyday Americans but more and more susceptible to manipulation. It has culminated in the disaster we are all now living through, as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their MAGA sycophants rush to essentially dismantle the federal government and turn our country into a dictatorship.)

Lutnick said these insane, out-of-touch things on a podcast hosted by a gang of rich Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

Some pesky facts about Social Security:

• Currently, around 70 million Americans depend on Social Security every month.

• At the risk of stating the obvious, they have earned those benefits. Social Security is not a government handout. (Unlike the numerous tax breaks and subsidies that billionaires like Howard Lutnick and giant corporations get courtesy of American taxpayers.)

• People pay into the system throughout their working lives, then get money back once they reach a certain age.

• If the Trump regime fails to fulfill its obligation to send Social Security payments, the American people will have every right to complain, no matter what Howard Lutnick thinks.

A message for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick:

As a billionaire, it may be hard for you to imagine what it would be like not to get the meager Social Security payment that millions and millions of Americans rely on each month — which, as you should know, they have earned — to pay for basic necessities, like housing, food, and medicines. But are you really so out of touch that you think the American people should just shut up and take it if the administration that you are a senior member of fails to fulfill its Social Security obligations? You owe the American people an apology.

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