The most tone-deaf moment in recent politics arrived last week. In a podcast interview, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — worth over $1 billion — said of old people on Social Security, “If Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month, my 94-year-old mother-in-law wouldn’t complain. She’d think something got messed up and she’d get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming and yelling. Anybody who knows payments knows you stop the checks, and whoever screams is the one stealing.”

Excuse me? Did he just say that anyone complaining about not getting their check is likely a thief? That the administration’s true aim is to use baseless claims of fraud to break apart Social Security?

Social Security is arguably the most successful anti-poverty program in American history. Before President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law in 1935, more than 50 percent of seniors lived in poverty. Today, that number is about 10 percent.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Social Security is the only thing keeping 22 million adults and children above the poverty line. The center also notes that nearly 6 million of its beneficiaries are under age 65 and nearly 1 million are children.

Yet the administration continues undermining the program in plain sight.

As former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley recently wrote on........

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