BREAKING: The White House is considering firing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick after the Jensen Huang spy scandal, according to Reuters
Another Trump cabinet member’s job is on the line, and this one is tied to a Chinese spy scandal.
Reuters reported that senior White House officials are discussing whether to push out Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The talks follow the fallout from the scandal involving Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who resigned amid revelations about an affair with Alice Huang, an executive at the Singapore-based firm Megaspeed. She is suspected of being a Chinese intelligence operative.
That’s where Lutnick comes in. Lawmakers and administration officials accuse him and the Commerce Department of repeatedly resisting and stalling efforts to put Megaspeed and other flagged Chinese entities on a U.S. trade blacklist.
In other words, the people trying to keep Chinese-linked companies away from American technology say the Commerce Secretary kept getting in the way.
The White House says there’s nothing to worry about. A White House official told Reuters that Trump still has complete confidence in Lutnick and his “America First” trade policies.
We’ve heard that before. Pete Hegseth got an “A plus plus plus” from Trump on Tuesday while he fought impeachment, and his own party’s senators were publicly questioning his information about the Iran war. Reports that Trump is weighing the ouster of another top Cabinet aide have been circulating all week.
Whether Lutnick survives will depend on what the president decides. But when the White House starts talking about firing a Cabinet secretary and also says it has complete confidence in him, one of those two things is usually true.