Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon piled onto mounting criticism that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is making too many flubs during his media appearances.
Bannon, who served as strategist during Trump’s first administration, argued that Lutnick should be yanked from television, since the White House needs a unified message on its trade policy.
“I don’t know why Lutnick’s still doing media. Let me be blunt,” Bannon said Monday on his podcast “War Room.”
“I think he’s close to being an unmitigated disaster. We should see a lot less of Lutnick on TV,” he added.
He praised other members of the administration, particularly Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for being selective on which media interviews they accept.
“We have to have a clear message so people understand what the process is,” Bannon said.
Lutnick, who was confirmed to the key Cabinet role in February, has become a go-to on President Trump’s tariffs – but he’s offered conflicting opinions on topics and made various faux pas on live television.
“There is a way to have a trading order that puts America first and puts American citizens first and most important starts to bring back high-value added manufacturing to the United States,” Bannon said.
“And no, Howard Lutnick, it’s not all going to be done by robots. We’re not doing this so we can set up some robots to have a better life,” Bannon said.
It was a dig at one of Lutnick’s most recent blunders, made while speaking to Fox News host Jesse Waters earlier this month.
“What’s going to happen is robotics are going to replace the cheap labor that we’ve seen all across the world,” Lutnick told Waters.
“Our high school-educated people, they’re gonna train to do robotics mechanics. It’s kind of like a supercharged BMW mechanic. You just can fix those robots,” Lutnick continued.
The commerce secretary, formerly the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, has also backtracked several of his statements – first promising there would be no recession, then adding that if there was a recession, it would be “worth it.”
Lutnick has made other questionable remarks during his media appearances, like insinuating that only “fraudsters” would complain about a missing Social Security check, or encouraging Fox News viewers to buy Tesla stock.
His TV appearances have been so challenging for the White House that he was asked to curb them last month, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has publicly criticized the commerce secretary’s comments, especially his indifference as US stocks tanked last week.
“I just figured out why @howardlutnick is indifferent to the stock market and the economy crashing,” Ackman wrote in a post on X. “He and Cantor are long bonds. He profits when our economy implodes.”
“It’s a bad idea to pick a Secretary of Commerce whose firm is levered long fixed income. It’s an irreconcilable conflict of interest,” he continued, though he later walked back the comments in another social media post.
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