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

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

In a podcast appearance Friday, Lutnick ― a billionaire Trump donor-turned-Cabinet member ― pontificated that seniors wouldn’t worry if they didn’t receive a Social Security check 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 net worth of $1.5 billion, said on the “All-In” podcast.

He suggested that halting Social Security checks might be a good way to root out people trying to defraud the system.

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

“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 found that 77% of current retirees rely on Social Security checks to cover necessary expenses, while only 15% say they are not at all reliant on them.

His remarks come the same day Leland Dudek, the temporary director of the Social Security Administration, suggested agency operations would be so burdened by a court blocking the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s access to sensitive databases that he would just have to shut down the whole department, potentially halting payments to 70 million people.

Lutnick’s out-of-touch comments on Social Security checks come days after a bizarre push he made for Americans to buy stock in Tesla, which has seen its shares lose about half of their value this year, wildly backfired.

In a Fox News appearance Wednesday, Lutnick urged viewers to invest in Elon Musk’s electric car company and promised them that the stock will “never be this cheap again.”

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

Tesla’s stock dropped another 1.7% the morning after Lutnick’s sales pitch.