Howard Lutnick, Haverford College’s largest donor, could shape a second Trump administration

When students at Haverford College study for exams, they visit the Lutnick Library — a gift from ’83 alumnus and billionaire Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street financial services firm.

They exercise in the Douglas B. Gardner Integrated Athletic Center — named after Lutnick’s best friend, a colleague who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the upper floors of the North Tower alongside two-thirds of the company.

Artists can even exhibit their work in the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery — another result of the $65 million Lutnick has given to Haverford over several decades.

Now he is prepared to make an impact far beyond the Main Line.

The 63-year-old executive is a close associate of former President Donald Trump, who this summer appointed Lutnick to cochair his presidential transition team and asked him to vet appointees for a potential second term.

That’s a significant leap into national politics for Lutnick, a veteran New York City power broker and, more recently, a major cryptocurrency proponent who is by far the largest donor in Haverford’s history.

“When I look back on my life and how I got here, it was Haverford College,” Lutnick said several weeks before Election Day.

A Long Islander who met Trump on Manhattan’s charity circuit around the turn of the millennium — later making a guest appearance alongside him on The Celebrity Apprentice — Lutnick has become a major backer of Trump’s 2024 campaign, giving more than $10 million to his reelection effort and raising millions more from donors.

Lutnick‘s profile has only increased in his new role, which the former president announced after attending an August fundraiser at Lutnick’s home in the Hamptons.

As top Democrats raise alarm over Trump’s vow to gut the federal workforce and appoint loyalists should he be elected in November, rarely has there been more attention paid to the selection of those who will guide crucial decisions about the nation’s military, economy, and public services.

In a wide-ranging interview, Lutnick discussed his role as a political “mosaic painter” seeking candidates for Trump — including those who will show “fidelity” to his leadership — as well as Haverford’s response to protests over Israel’s war in Gaza and the role Elon Musk could play in a second Trump term.

Lutnick’s embrace of the former president began just after Oct. 7, 2023.

“He had clear, moral clarity when it came to Israel and what happened, and the way that he thought about what happened,” Lutnick said. ”That was huge to me.”

Trump has cast himself as the best candidate for Israel, even suggesting that the terrorist organization Hamas’ deadly assault outside the Gaza Strip, in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 abducted, would not have happened had he been in power.

Lutnick has donated to candidates of both parties in the past. Campaign finance records show that in recent years, however, his contributions have gone exclusively to GOP-aligned PACs. That includes a $500,000 donation in May to Keystone Renewal, a group dedicated to electing conservative candidates in Pennsylvania.

A recent Financial Times article claimed Lutnick was rumored to be in consideration for ambassador to Israel. Lutnick said he had no interest in the role.

Joining Lutnick in leading the search is Linda Marie McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment and head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.

Vice presidential nominee JD Vance and Trump’s two older sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are honorary cochairs, as are former Democrats Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Lutnick did not go as far as to name which candidates he had spoken with. He said they range from nuclear physicists to the CEO of a $100 billion company.

“I don’t need or want anything,” he said. “I just want to help [Trump] have the greatest government he can have — and that’s by finding him the talented people he didn’t have last time. He just didn’t have it last time.”

Trump‘s first administration was marked by a revolving door of top officials, including those who revoked their support of the former president after the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol. This month, it was reported that retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went as far as calling Trump “fascist to the core.”

Above all, the 2024 transition team is looking for candidates who will remain loyal to Trump and his policies.

“They did not respect that he was elected president of the United States …,” Lutnick said of former officials whom Trump had deposed. “You get fired if you don’t do what the man says.”

Lutnick’s history at Haverford almost ended in the opening days of his freshman year.

A little more than a year before Lutnick arrived on Philadelphia’s Main Line as a Division III tennis recruit, his mother had died of breast cancer. His father, an American history professor, was battling lung cancer.

A week into the semester, Lutnick learned that nurses had accidentally given his father a high dose of chemotherapy medication meant for another patient, killing him.

He prepared to drop out to care for his younger brother alongside his older sister, but a call from Haverford’s president altered his course:

Haverford would pay Lutnick’s tuition.

“When you‘re going through hell, who takes care of you, it goes in your soul,” said Lutnick, who graduated with an economics degree. “Ultimately, I ended up having the life my father wanted me to have,” he added.

Lutnick rose through the ranks of Cantor Fitzgerald, becoming CEO and, in 1996, chairman of the sprawling firm.

After the company lost 658 employees on 9/11, Lutnick‘s name became synonymous with the tragedy when he launched a campaign to donate a portion of the company’s profits to victims’ families.

He returned to Haverford‘s sphere as a member and eventual chair of the school’s board of managers, overseeing a modernization of the college’s facilities in the mid-2010s.

His gift of $25 million in 2014 was the largest donation in the institution‘s 181-year history, prompting former Haverford president Dan Weiss to commend Lutnick’s “unwavering commitment to Haverford, his passion for supporting the college’s richly deserved reputation for excellence in so many ways, and his spectacular generosity.”

Much has changed on college campuses since Oct. 7, and Lutnick’s alma mater is no exception.

As protests from pro-Palestinian groups swept the nation’s higher education institutions, Israel’s supporters condemned what they said was a rampant culture of antisemitic language and behavior among students.

At Haverford, students periodically protested Israel’s war, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians. Sit-ins occupied the campus’ Founders Hall, and students erected an encampment on the college green.

Haverford did not call for a cease-fire and addressed antisemitism allegations, but after a semester of protests, some Jewish students sued the college and said they had created a hostile environment.

Lutnick thought the school could have done more to condemn the protesters.

“I cannot lose my love for Haverford College — it’s not possible,” Lutnick said. “But I can express my utter disappointment at the lack of moral clarity of their leadership.”

While Lutnick will not name names about those he’s vetting for another Trump term, he was happy to talk about one person familiar to many Pennsylvanians as of late: Elon Musk.

Musk has spent the latter half of October stumping for Trump across the state, and the billionaire has given around $75 million to his America PAC, a group dedicated to Trump’s reelection. Musk has even offered Pennsylvania voters millions in exchange for registering to vote, raising the eyebrows of legal scholars.

Musk and Lutnick connected this month, according to the Cantor Fitzgerald chairman, who posted on the Musk-owned X a photo of the two with the message: “Welcome to DOGE.”

That’s both a reference to the much-memed cryptocurrency Dogecoin and an increasingly real proposition that Musk could head what would be a newly created entity, the Department of Governmental Efficiency — or DOGE.

“Elon Musk’s DOGE will rip waste out of the government’s $6.5 trillion budget,” Lutnick said.

Because Musk’s companies are major government contractors, he would need to step down from those roles to avoid a conflict of interest. Lutnick, however, suggested Musk could “drive” the department from the private sector.

Asked what he considered wasteful spending, Lutnick mentioned a series of offices maintained by the Department of the Interior and the cost of military equipment U.S. troops left behind in Afghanistan, and he questioned why some of the government‘s 2.9 million employees hadn’t been fired.

In a recent statement to Politico, Lutnick’s team rejected accusations that he was mixing his transition duties with personal business interests.

Anonymous Trump insiders alleged that Lutnick discussed high-stakes regulatory matters involving his firm during Capitol Hill transition meetings. A Lutnick associate said the cochair had taken his transition and business meetings separately.

Meanwhile, Lutnick denied that a second Trump term would be staffed with affiliates of Project 2025.

The Harris campaign has made the far-right Heritage Foundation think tank’s sprawling blueprint for a second Trump administration a centerpiece in its case against the former president, warning it would further weaken abortion protections, overhaul the power of the executive branch, and weaponize the Department of Justice.

“I want to be very clear: The Trump-Vance transition considers Project 2025 radioactive,” Lutnick said. “We’ve never connected to it, never associated with it. It has nothing to do with us.”