Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald LP, arrives at a campaign event with former US President Donald Trump, not pictured, at Madison Square Garden in New York, Sunday, October 27, 2024. Photo by Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images

By Lauren Markoe
November 7, 2024

Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and megadonor to Jewish and Israeli causes, invited 130 friends to his Hamptons home in August and raised $15 million for former President Donald Trump’s election campaign that night.

The president-elect attended that dinner and shortly after named Lutnick co-leader of his transition team. During the course of the election, Lutnick raised $75 million for Trump campaignnot including the $10 million he personally donated.

I had the pleasure of hosting President Trump at my home last week, surrounded by 130 supporters who share his vision for America. Throughout the evening, he answered questions and spoke about the key issues impacting our country and the world at large. I think their policies will be… pic.twitter.com/jF2wIaqLbm

—Howard Lutnick (@howardlutnick) August 9, 2024

Lutnick at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, the Ohel

Lutnick addressed the Madison Square Garden crowd that came out to cheer on Trump nine days before Election Day. Now he’s reviewing resumes, trying to figure out who will help the president-elect lead the country. He himself has been mentioned as a possible member of the administration, perhaps as Secretary of the Treasury, perhaps as ambassador to Israel. He saying I would reject the embassy.

the billionaire said on Fox and Friends last week that he speaks “every day” with Trump, whom he has known since the beginning of the century, when they both attended some of the same New York charity galas. he once appeared on Trump’s “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

Last week, he accompanied Trump to the Ohel, where Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, is buried; It is a frequent stop for candidates trying to show respect to the Orthodox Jewish community.

In recent months, Lutnick has been Trump’s most enthusiastic liaison to the business world. He has appeared on financial news shows, at the Garden and at fundraisers to pitch the former president’s plan for tariffs and tax cuts.

But this is not the first time Lutnick, 63, has attracted national attention. Although many may not recognize his name, they may remember a Wall Street tycoon crying on national television immediately after 9/11.

Lutnick guides Cantor Fitzgerald through the tragedy of 9/11

On September 11, 2001, Lutnick was CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a company that transacts trillions of dollars daily in the bond market and set up its New York headquarters in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, in floors 101 to 105.

Cantor’s brother, Gary, was killed in the 2001 terrorist attack on the buildings, which killed more Cantor Fitzgerald employees, 658, than employees of any other company. Lutnick himself survived because he took his son to his first day of kindergarten that day before going to work.

She cried through most of her Sept. 13 interview with ABC’s Connie Chung, earning the respect of millions of viewers when she said she was searching hospitals for all the missing employees, not just her brother.

“Here is my list, here are all the ones I have. Find someone on this list,” he said while there was still hope of finding survivors. “Because if you find someone on this list, then I can call them and give someone else some hope, some dream, maybe, maybe I can kiss their children. “I would love to find my brother, but I would love to find your brother, your wife or your husband.”

“Howard Lutnick, a personality this country will not forget,” ABC News anchor Peter Jennings told viewers as the interview ended.

The country may have forgotten about Lutnick in the intervening years, but he is once again on its screens.

At the pro-Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, he spoke about his brother and the Cantor Fitzgerald employees who died on 9/11. He told people how the company raised $180 million to support the families of those employees, reducing the paychecks of surviving employees by 25%. (Lutnick also took criticism after the show, when several 9/11 widows said their husbands’ paychecks had stopped arriving just days after the attack.)

He continued at the rally shouting until he was hoarse, denouncing the North American Free Trade Agreement, promising a balanced budget and “the best team that has ever entered government.”

“We must elect Donald J. Trump president because we must crush jihad!” he shouted to cheers in the Garden.

Family tragedies, campus protests

Lutnick grew up in Jericho, on New York’s Long Island, with his younger brother Gary and older sister Edie.

His mother died of lymphoma when he was a senior in high school. His father died after a nurse accidentally gave him 100 times the dose of chemotherapy he was supposed to receive; Lutnick was a freshman at Haverford College at the time. Haverford then gave Lutnick a full scholarship. In return, he has become the principal of the small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania. largest donor.

Last year, pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza shook many American universities. Ludnick said he thought Haverford could have done a better job protecting Jewish students.

“I can’t lose my love for Haverford College; it’s not possible,” Lutnick said The Philadelphia Investigator. “But I can express my utter disappointment at the lack of moral clarity from your leadership.”

Lutnick married Allison Lambert in 1994, who He earned his law degree from Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law.. Their wedding, at the Plaza Hotel in New York, was officiated by David Benedict, the now deceased former cantor of Temple Israel, a Reform congregation on Long Island.

Donations to Harris, Jewish and Israeli institutions

In the past, though not recently, Lutnick had donated to both Democrats and Republicans. Allison Lambert, now Allison Lutnick, donated to Kamala Harris’ 2016 Senate campaign. Asked about that donation. on Bloomberg television In July, Lutnick said his wife had become a strong Trump supporter because of Israel, which he called “his number one issue.”

The Lutnicks have four children, one of whose bar mitzvah became the subject of tabloid press.

Ryan Lutnick, whose first day of preschool fell on 9/11, celebrated his bar mitzvah party six years ago at the Metropolitan Museum’s Temple of Dendur, the The New York Post Page Six Gossip Column reported. It quoted a source as saying that a performance by rapper Rich the Kid at the event would likely cost “between $200,000 and $300,000.”

On the guest list, according to the tabloid: the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, Melania Trump’s former advisor Stephanie Winston Wolkoff and publicist Alison Brod.

Lutnick has long supported Jewish organizations.

Among them: the Park Avenue Synagogue; the Hamptons Synagogue where it is honorary trusteeand United Hatzalah, an Israeli emergency medical response group based in Jerusalem. Lutnick and his wife presided over the annual United Hatzalah gala in New York this year, the first since Oct. 7, organizers noted, linking Lutnick’s loss of his brother, friends and employees in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack to the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Lutnick has said that while he gave Trump something in past election cycles, his enthusiasm for the former president soared this year, in part because said The Philadelphia Inquirer, because of Israel.

“That was huge for me,” he said.

Lauren Markoe is news editor of the Forward. Originally from the Bronx, she reported for The Patriot Ledgerseveral McClatchy newspapers in the South and Religion News Service, where she was also editor-in-chief. He also produced live radio shows on WAMU in Washington, DC, where he lives.

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