On Tuesday night (19 Nov), US President-elect Donald Trump announced that he is nominating former WWE Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Linda McMahon as his pick for Secretary of Education.
She and her husband, Vince McMahon, co-founded the professional wrestling company WWE. The couple turned it into an entertainment juggernaut before Mrs McMahon pivoted to politics.
According to AP, she ran for Senate in Connecticut twice in 2010 and 2012 but lost both times.
Source: NPR
She then supported Trump’s presidential bid in 2016, donating US$6 million (S$8 million) to fund his campaign.
Trump then chose Mrs McMahon to serve as leader of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019 during his first term as president.
She left the position after just two years but has remained in staunch support of the President-elect and is reportedly co-leading Tump’s transition team.
Mrs McMahon served on the Connecticut Board of Education for a year in 2009.
At the time, she said she’d always had an interest in education and dreamed of being a teacher before she had to set it aside for her marriage.
However, critics have pointed out that Mrs McMahon has little experience in the education sector.
On the social media post where he announced her nomination, Trump said: “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”
Source: @Linda_McMahon on X
CNN reported that Trump’s education secretary could oversee the closure of the Department of Education which administers federal funding to almost every public K-12 school in the country.
It also manages the US$1.6 trillion (S$2.15 trillion) federal student loan portfolio.
The President-elect had called for its demise while on his campaign trail.
“We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing,” Trump said during a Wisconsin rally in September.
Also read: Trump appoints Elon Musk as head of new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ aka DOGE
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Featured image adapted from @Linda_McMahon on X and NPR.
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