What A Fool Believes should be the theme song for this administration. Every single day there is some unbelievable proposition that comes out of Trump world and it’s framed as being the salvation of the republic. Just yesterday Howard Lutnick was going on and on about sweatshops. He didn’t call them sweatshops, of course, but what he described was nothing but the very worst form of labor there is. And I worked in a potato factory for part of one summer, when I was 16, so I have a concept of factory labor and what an utter drag it can be. Not to Howard, however. This is some great thing he’s describing.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick:
“The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America.”
pic.twitter.com/S1hfH5lT3k— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) April 7, 2025
Did you hear the same thing I did or am I hallucinating? The Secretary Of Commerce has a vision of “high school graduates” “screwing little-little screws into IPhones” — and this is a LIFE? This is something to be looked forward to? Charles Dickens used to write characters like Lutnick, only this guy is for real. Here we are, the Golden Age Trump promised.
MAGA pic.twitter.com/ZJgnmVVsUf
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) April 7, 2025
That’s the vision and it is depressing. I had another gig one time with factory work, this time when I was working in radio, in my twenties. The engineer at the radio station had some kind of part time electronics sideline and so he paid me $0.17 apiece for these little fuse thingys. It’s hard to describe, but there were two plastic holes held together by a base, and you put a wire in each of the plastic holes and then crimped them. The deal was you had to get the wires in right, because if you didn’t have them in far enough, they would fall out and the gizmo was then worthless and had to be thrown away (and you didn’t get paid for it.)
Anyhow, I could do this for half an hour here and half an hour there and then take the batch back to him a few days later and get paid. But I’m here to tell you, I would have gone batshit in short order if I would have had to do that eight hours a day. Or even four hours a day.
So Lutnick’s vision is horrific, and it’s not going to happen that way, anyhow. The work that Lutnick sees high school graduates doing will in fact be done by robots. And Lutnick admitted that. In the same word salad sentence, no less.
“You said robots on other networks,” Brennan pressed on. “You said that to FOX.”
Lutnick responded with utter gibberish.
“The armies of millions of people- well, remember, the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little- little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America,” he said. “It’s going to be automated and great Americans- the tradecraft of America, is going to fix them, is going to work on them.”
“They’re going to be mechanics. There’s going to be HVAC specialists,” he added. “There’s going to be electricians, the tradecraft of America. Our high school-educated Americans- the core to our workforce is going to have the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America to work on these high-tech factories, which are all coming to America. That’s what’s going to build our next generation of America.”
You see how he switched from “armies of millions” “screwing in little-little screws” to mechanics and electricians. Those are union jobs. Those are a different kettle of fish.
Long story short, Lutnick hasn’t the foggiest clue what he’s talking about. He’s just up there blowing smoke. There is no plan. There is no plan for anything in Trump 2.0, there are only the “concepts” of a plan, like Trump said that he had with respect to health care during the last campaign.
And you don’t hear about healthcare these days, other than to hope like hell that Medicaid and Medicare don’t go by the wayside. Makes you long for the “two weeks” mantra of yore, does it not? The goalposts were always being moved for an Obamacare replacement two weeks out. And those were the good old days, compared to today’s insanity.
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This is the same asshole who said his mother-in-law wouldn’t call to complain if she didn’t get her Social.Security check, but fraudsters would. MiL lives with them in their NY townhouse. She doesn’t pay rent or a mortgage. Hell, she needs Social.Security about as much as boar hog needs tits,to.use a colorful Southern expression. His awareness of reality is non-existent.