Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, says some pretty ridiculous and outrageous things, including telling people this week to buy Tesla stock to help Elon Musk, which violates federal law. But on Friday he really set off alarms when he said that only “fraudsters” would complain if they didn’t get their social security checks, raising the specter of payments being disrupted.
That was followed by the Acting Social Security commissioner, Leland Dudek, actually threatening to shut down the Social Security Administration—and stop checks from being delivered—after a judge ruled that personally identifiable information from the agency couldn’t be shared with Elon Musk and his sinister team. But as quickly as he ratcheted up this threat, Dudek backed down in another example of this administration’s chaotic and reckless actions. Still, we can see what they so badly want to do, and it’s alarming.
On the positive side, in yet another week of madness and assaults on our government and its citizens by Trump, we saw two Democratic leaders, Rep.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, galvanizing tens of thousands in the West, as people are hungry for leadership. It’s coming as more protests gear up, and hopefully is a model for other Democratic leaders.