In the two weeks since Donald Trump was reelected president, he’s tapped a string of individuals to serve as second-term advisers and cabinet members whose common thread could be summed up by four words: What the actual fuck. Trump wants to put a rabid anti-vaxxer in charge of the nation’s health, named a man accused of having sex with a minor* as attorney general, and picked a former Real World cast member to run the Transportation Department. Now, unsurprisingly, he’s decided a person best known as a wrestling executive should preside over the Department of Education.
Yes, on Tuesday night, Trump announced that he had named former longtime World Wrestling Entertainment president and CEO Linda McMahon as his pick for education secretary, saying that McMahon will “make America Number One in Education in the World” by “sending education BACK TO THE STATES.” Trump has previously pledged to dismantle the Department of Education, and while it seems unlikely that he’ll actually be able to do so, he can certainly use his cabinet pick to attempt to hack away at the agency through budget cuts and other measures.
As for McMahon, her credentials to run the Department of Education are unsurprisingly scant. As The Washington Post notes, in 2009, she once claimed to have earned a degree in education but, shocker: that wasn’t actually true. Meanwhile, like any Trump nominee worth their salt, she has been associated with at least one sex scandal. Per New York Magazine:
In October, Linda and [her husband] Vince McMahon were sued in a Maryland civil court by five former “ring boys” (basically gofers) who claimed that they had been abused by a former announcer and that the McMahons had hired him despite having knowledge of his alleged conduct. The unnamed plaintiffs were as young as 12 when they were allegedly abused by announcer Mel Phillips, who died in 2012. Phillips was fired in 1988 but rehired six weeks later with the stipulation that he stop abusing children at work, according to Business Insider. (He was fired for good in 1990 after more alleged incidents of abuse.) “Vince and Linda returned Phillips to the organization with the caveat that Mel steer clear of underaged boys, stop hanging around kids, and stop chasing after kids,” said a witness in a 1992 defamation suit related to the incident.
The McMahons and WWE have denied all wrongdoing. Linda stepped down from her executive position at WWE in 2009 to run for Senate in Connecticut, resulting in unsuccessful bids in 2010 and 2012.
For his part, Vince McMahon has been personally accused of sexual misconduct and infidelity numerous times; in 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that McMahon had paid out more than $12 million over 16 years to keep allegations against him quiet. Two years later, a former staffer filed suit against McMahon, claiming he’d offered her a job for sex and allegedly trafficked her to other men. The lawsuit has since been paused—because prosecutors are investigating the trafficking allegation. McMahon has denied all the allegations.
In other cabinet news, Trump on Tuesday named Dr. Mehmet Oz—long known for peddling health misinformation and snake oil—as his pick for administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, while Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick—who has embraced Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine stance—was tapped for commerce secretary.
*Matt Gaetz denies this.
Cre: Vanity Fair
