‘Many leaders on Wall Street’ secretly support Trump, says reform group chairman

INTERMEDIATE: Howard Lutnick, chairman of Trump’s transition team and CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, told Fox News Digital that Wall Street leaders have privately expressed their intention to vote for former President Donald Trump and his “growth” policies. .

Lutnick sat down for an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on the sidelines of Trump’s historic rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

Lutnick runs the Trump-Vance transition team alongside his chair, former Trump business director Linda McMahon.

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“I have a great opportunity to talk to everybody about the new government and what we’re going to do,” Lutnick told Fox News Digital.

“It’s unbelievable the reception we’re getting because a lot of leaders on Wall Street, they don’t want to come out and talk about it, because, well, they have clients on both sides — that makes sense,” Lutnick said. “But privately, they say, ‘We have to elect President Donald Trump. We have to implement his policies. We need pro-growth policies.’

Lutnick added: “Donald Trump wants to make America great again. Kamala Harris wants to make America Europe – a controlled, controlled, controlled ‘do-nothing’ world.”

Lutnick told Fox News Digital that Trump, and those who support him, including Wall Street, want to “embrace greatness.”

“When Donald Trump says, ‘Let’s make America great again,’ we want to embrace greatness. We want to embrace our great companies. We want to embrace our great economy. We want to embrace our great workforce. We want to stop sending manufacturing products overseas or to Mexico,” Lutnick said. he told Fox News Digital. “Let’s hire our people here. We build quality products here. And we’re not completely dependent on our economy to make America the best it’s ever been.”

Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald LP, during a Bloomberg Television interview on the opening day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024. (Getty Images / Getty Images)

At the time, Lutnick told Fox News Digital that he “had a long conversation” with Trump, in which the two “figured out how we can put a budget in the United States of America.”

Lutnick said he flew to Brownsville, Texas, to meet with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, where the two discussed the creation of a government efficiency commission.

“We spent time at the Department of Government Operations – DOGE,” Lutnick told Fox News Digital. “Together, he and I will rip up all the excess waste from our $6.5 trillion budget.”

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“DOGE” will be tasked with conducting a comprehensive financial and operational audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for radical reforms.

Donald Trump at an event in this city in Georgia. (Faulkner Focus / Fox News)

Lutnick said that before Trump, “nobody ever worried about spending. Nobody ever looked at how much we were spending.”

“We think we can save $1 trillion in our budget,” Lutnick said. “There is a lot of waste, the way we buy things from the government is strange, we just decide that we want it, and then we just buy it, there is no bidding process. , and it makes no sense at all.”

He added: “It’s just not the way to do it.

Lutnick pointed to the disastrous withdrawal of the Biden-Harris administration in Afghanistan, saying that the US military “left behind $80 billion worth of equipment.”

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“Why? If you left your house, and I told you to leave all the furniture behind, and you go to your new house, what’s the first thing you need to buy? You have to buy new furniture,” Lutnick said. “So, if you just left your enemy with 80 billion worth of assets, how much do you need to buy? We need to buy 150 billion dollars to fight those bad guys.”

Elon Musk shakes hands with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump backstage during a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show on October 5, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Photos by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

But Lutnick said this is “a military industrial complex that has our own way, that makes us spend our money on all these wars and all these different events.”

“And that’s why Dick Cheney and Donald J. Trump don’t get along, because Donald Trump doesn’t want wars,” Lutnick said. “He doesn’t want to spend this money. And the military industry, they love those wars and they say, ‘Let’s buy more missiles.’

Lutnick added: “So, we’re going to end wars, we’re going to end spending, and we’re going to start saving government money.”

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At Trump’s big, sold-out rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Sunday, Lutnick rallied supporters of the former president, as did Musk.

“Your money is being wasted, the Department of Public Works will fix that,” said Musk. “We’re going to take the government off your back and out of your pocket. And America won’t just be great. America will reach unprecedented heights. The future will be amazing.”