Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who narrowly escaped dying along with his 656 colleagues and friends at Cantor Fitzgerald on 9/11, told Newsmax on Thursday that he favors President Donald Trump’s call for a federal takeover of the museum built to honor those who were lost.
“Donald Trump is not thinking about now; he’s thinking about what happens in 20 years, 30 years, 50 years,” Lutnick, who helped shape the museum, told “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “You can’t let that fall and not be funded. And so the president is thinking we should make this a national monument, so the United States of America takes care of it and always makes sure it’s right, it’s beautiful, and the memory lasts forever.”
He added that he was “in charge of what went in the museum to make sure they didn’t make it like a Disney attraction, just to make sure it was powerful and really told the story, and it really had the right memorial, so I’m very, very proud of the museum.”
Lutnick warned, though, that philanthropy alone cannot protect it forever. “If the federal government owns it, it is funded forever. Michael Bloomberg is a great philanthropist leading the museum, so he’s going to take care of it. But what happens when he’s gone?”
Lutnick, before joining the Trump administration, headed the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which occupied floors 101-105 of One World Trade Center at the time of the attack, and said that the company’s culture was built on close ties.
“The rule of my company at the time [was] that we’re going to spend so much time together, let’s pick people that we like,” Lutnick said. “You hire competent people that you like, so you worked really well together. That meant we hired lots of people and people’s family, lots of brothers, lots of sisters-in-law, your best friend from college.”
That closeness made the loss even more devastating.
“Everybody in the office that morning was killed because there was no way out. So everybody was killed — my brother Gary, 36, my best friend, Dougie, 39, so many of my friends, and 20 sets of brothers. That means a mom lost two, and one gentleman lost his two daughters. So this was a tight family, and they got killed.”
Lutnick survived only because he was taking his son to his first day of kindergarten. “I have a picture, two minutes before the plane hits, with my boy outside of school,” he said.
On X, Lutnick also recalled the disaster, writing that his brother Gary had tried calling as the towers burned.
He added in his post that he has learned, as commerce secretary, that the threat of attack remains.
“What I’ve learned is how profoundly beautiful and extraordinary this country is but also how desperately our adversaries wish us harm,” he said. “Make no mistake: If given the chance, the monsters who orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks, and those like them, would do it again. And again. And again.”
“But the greatness of America lies in the way our military, our government, our first responders, and our people confront these horrors,” he wrote. “America is a nation that rebuilds, endures, and never surrenders to evil. Today, we honor those we lost 24 years ago and the brave first responders who courageously stepped up to save others.”
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