Howard Lutnick | All-In DC

**Jason** (0:00)
You go to New York much?

**Howard Lutnick** (0:02)
Never. I closed my house. Oh, basically, I tricked my wife. You know how your wife always wants to renovate your house?

**Jason** (0:12)
No idea.

**Howard Lutnick** (0:13)
So my wife always wants to renovate my house, right? Every minute I've been alive, my wife has wanted to renovate parts of my house. So we moved out once a year and a half ago. We moved out four year and a half, about six years ago. And she only did half the house and she still rues the day that she only did half the house.

**David Friedberg** (0:31)
Really? Yeah.

**Howard Lutnick** (0:33)
So that was the deal. What I did is I bought a house in Washington and said, do you want to renovate the house? She said, yeah. I said, great. We hired a contractor.

**David Friedberg** (0:40)
Wait, you brought Brett Behr's house, no? Yeah. That's a beautiful house.

**Howard Lutnick** (0:43)
I can talk about whatever you want, by the way. I'm happy to talk about serious things, casual things.

**David Friedberg** (0:48)
No, let's just do this. Let's roll because he's on fire.

**Jason** (0:50)
You're already running, right?

**David Friedberg** (0:51)
He's on fire.

**Jason** (1:06)
What did you guys say? That was fun.

**David Friedberg** (1:11)
Howard, thanks for being here. Thanks for joining myself and David Friedberg on the All-In Podcast. I want to take a step back before we talk about today, and instead talk about your friendship with the president, how it started, how you guys got to know each other, and walk us through the moment when you, you know, frankly, went out on the limit a little bit, stepped up, became the campaign finance chair, and then just that evolution.

**Howard Lutnick** (1:34)
So I've known the president since I was 30 years old. So I used to go on the, call it the charity circuit in New York. So there's basically a charity party every night when you live in New York.

**David Friedberg** (1:47)
Like the rubber chicken dinner.

**Howard Lutnick** (1:48)
Like literally the rubber chicken and so sort of every night you go out. And so the boss of my company, Bernie Cantor, he got tired of going.

**David Friedberg** (2:00)
Right.

**Howard Lutnick** (2:00)
So he didn't want to go. So he would send me with his wife and I would be her walker. I'm the 30 year old CEO of the company and I take her to the party.
And after the party, I put her in a limo and she'd go home. And DJ T would say, well, let's go out.
And so we'd go out. It wasn't planned, but he was at the party, he was 45 I'm at the party 30 and we chased the same girls. It worked out fine. And by the way, here's the thing about Donald Trump. He was the most famous, the most fun, the most interesting person 30 years ago. 33 years ago. I mean, here's the best thing. He's been on the cover of Time Magazine 59 times.

**David Friedberg** (2:49)
No way.

**Howard Lutnick** (2:49)
And then he leans over to me and he goes, and 20, we're good. But who can take that? I mean, who could take it? Like other people, when you have a bad cover of Time Magazine, you'd crumple, right? And be sand on the floor? And said, he's like, bring it.

**David Friedberg** (3:05)
Is it that he's just totally wired to understand that moment, like of being a public figure? Or like, what is it that's so unique about what constitutes the ability to navigate that over 40 years?

**Howard Lutnick** (3:18)
I think it adds energy to him.

**David Friedberg** (3:22)
To him. Right?

**Howard Lutnick** (3:23)
So everybody else's energy, what they don't understand is people bring negative energy to Donald Trump, right? And they're just charging his battery.

**David Friedberg** (3:31)
Okay?

**Howard Lutnick** (3:32)
Your energy around him comes to him. So when I come at him with a lot of energy, he comes back with a lot of energy, right? It doesn't matter. He never steps back. He just sort of takes it like the centrifuge and then hurls it back at you. And he's been that way always. So this is not new.

**Jason** (3:50)
This is just who he is.

**Howard Lutnick** (3:51)
This is who he is.
So those other people who attack him, they think they're attacking him. They're charging his battery. They're literally charging his battery. So he comes back bigger, stronger, bigger, stronger. And once you understand the man, the most intuitive person that you've ever met. And people say, well, okay, so people who know me, I don't suffer fools. And they have all these derogatory, all my left liberal friends, all these derogatory statements about the guy, right? And they know me really well, right? And they'd say, well, how can you work for him? I'd say, how can I work for him? The most intuitive person, he senses it. He knows it. He calls me up and he says, Panama Canal. That's what he says. He goes, Panama Canal. It just feels wrong, right? And then he sends me on the quest to go, I didn't do anything. I just start the quest to go look at it.