Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has become one of President Trump’s closest confidants, fielding regular phone calls from the 79-year-old commander in chief around 1 a.m. as the president maintains his well-known habit of operating on minimal sleep.
Lutnick, 64, revealed the timing of these exchanges in a 2025 New Yorker profile by Antonia Hitchens, explaining that Trump typically reaches him just as he’s climbing into bed. The commerce secretary acknowledged that he’s not the only person on Trump’s nocturnal call list, though he declined to identify other recipients.
The president’s nighttime calling routine isn’t new. Throughout his first term, Trump regularly phoned Cabinet members, allies and television personalities around midnight. A 2018 New York magazine piece captured Trump’s habit of calling Fox News host Sean Hannity after his show ended, with the two “gabbing like old girlfriends” about ratings, media coverage and Trump’s political adversaries.
Secretary of Homeland Security Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who replaced Kristi Noem in March, also receives nocturnal calls from the president. During a podcast appearance in February 2026, Mullin mentioned the late-night conversations, with his wife Christie interjecting “that happens a lot.”
Inside the 1 a.m. Ritual
The substance of these conversations varies widely. In 2025, Lutnick told the magazine that discussions sometimes turn to “real stuff,” including weighty trade issues like tariffs on Canadian steel. But more frequently, the president steers toward mundane topics and everyday chatter. The profile doesn’t clarify whether Trump or Lutnick initiates these late-night exchanges.
From “Buffoon” to Cabinet Confidant
Lutnick’s journey to becoming a Trump insider represents a dramatic political reversal. The former Cantor Fitzgerald chairman and CEO donated to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and privately told an acquaintance that same year he considered Trump a “buffoon.” By 2020, however, Lutnick had switched his allegiance to Trump over Biden, and by 2024, he’d become one of the campaign’s leading fundraisers and was selected to co-chair the presidential transition.
After being sworn in as Commerce Secretary in February 2025, Lutnick cast himself as Trump’s primary dealmaker, boasting to the magazine he is “experienced in business in the way none of these people are—except Donald Trump.” He’d originally pursued the Treasury position, which ultimately went to Scott Bessent. Supporters say Lutnick aspires to become the most consequential commerce secretary since Herbert Hoover held the post in the 1920s. Administration critics paint a different picture, with one official describing him as “an errand boy,” while another said Bessent’s Cabinet role “reassures us there is someone smart looking out for us.”
Tariff Turmoil and Capitol Hill Stumbles
Even their close relationship hasn’t shielded Lutnick from presidential wrath. When Trump unveiled a universal 10-percent tariff alongside several “reciprocal” tariffs on April 2, 2025 — billing the move as an effort to “Liberate America” — critics immediately challenged the mathematical basis for the proposal. An angry Trump called Lutnick demanding justification for the calculations. Lutnick couldn’t provide a satisfactory explanation but was dispatched to television to defend the numbers anyway.
Lutnick’s congressional testimony has proven rocky. Lawmakers criticized his defense of the administration’s trade strategy during an April 22, 2026, Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing. The following day, April 23, he faced additional grilling from a House Appropriations subcommittee, where Democrats pressed him on both tariffs and his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. On April 24, he testified before yet another House panel seeking additional trade-enforcement funding.
Bipartisan calls for Lutnick’s resignation have intensified over the newly disclosed Epstein connections. Rep. Thomas Massie publicly urged Lutnick to step down to “make life easier on the president.”
Lutnick has also championed Trump’s Gold Card visa program publicly, though as of his Hill appearances, just one applicant had received approval.
On April 30, 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden demanded documents from Lutnick and Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino regarding reports that the cryptocurrency company provided substantial loans to a trust benefiting Lutnick’s children, loans tied to his Cantor Fitzgerald divestment. “We want to ensure that Tether has not sought to bribe or otherwise exert control or influence over you,” the senators wrote.
A Washington Power Player
Lutnick and his wife, Allison, have planted themselves firmly in Washington’s elite, buying Fox News anchor Bret Baier’s residence for $25 million and decorating it with pieces by Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and other renowned artists. Trump attended a private birthday dinner for Lutnick at the home last week.
The profile suggests both men, despite enormous wealth and political influence, share an outsider status: tremendously rich yet “never granted access to the most rarefied Manhattan circles.” A source close to Lutnick drew a sharp contrast: in the heartland, Trump and Lutnick are viewed as towering successes, while at New York cocktail parties, they elicit eye rolls.
Lutnick, who once took part in a Celebrity Apprentice charity auction, insists his understanding of Trump runs deeper than anyone else’s. “I know him so well that I know where the puck is going,” he asserted. Whether that claimed intuition translates into meaningful policy accomplishments, or simply more 1 a.m. calls, remains the central question for both supporters and critics on Capitol Hill.
