Trump’s new Secretary of Education has quite the checkered history
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Managing Editor
It’s been a few weeks since Donald Trump won the presidential election, and his administration is starting to take shape. Many of his picks have raised eyebrows and alarms, even if some of them ultimately have already failed or stepped aside, like Matt Gaetz as attorney general. One pick that is likely to be confirmed, but will also have ramifications, is the appointment of Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education.
For better or worse, I’m intimately aware of Linda McMahon’s activities outside of politics. I’ve openly talked about my love of pro wrestling in these columns, as well as my disgust when it’s warranted. Recently, in the last year, I’ve talked about the allegations against Vince McMahon, who was credibly accused of sex trafficking and was fully exiled from the company he created as a result (after previously being exiled briefly in 2022 for other sexual misconduct and embezzlement). But he didn’t create and run the company to the heights of success that it reached alone.
Linda is Vince’s wife, at least on paper. The two have been separated for at least a decade, but remain married. This is likely for financial reasons, but it also helps in terms of forging political connections; the McMahons are big Republican donors. Vince McMahon is also one of Donald Trump’s best friends.
Trump and the McMahons have a noted history of doing business together, on-screen and off-screen, dating back to the fourth annual WrestleMania that was held at one of Trump’s casinos. That relationship seems to remain strong today, and Vince McMahon is extremely likely to receive a pardon for his crimes if the federal investigation against him somehow still proceeds. The 2023 book “RINGMASTER” by Abraham Josephine Reisman even revealed that Trump always took Vince McMahon’s calls in private during his time in the Oval Office. And of course, Linda herself served as Trump’s Small Business Administrator during two years of his first term.
While Linda preferred to stay off-camera, she found herself involved in numerous storylines in the early 2000’s. I’ve watched this woman take a piledriver on a steel stage. I’ve seen her be slapped by and I’ve seen her slap others. I’ve seen her kick her husband in the junk and make a crowd of 66,000 people in Texas come unglued. Her acting was wooden, but it didn’t matter. “Sweet Zombie Linda” as she was known by some was always a hero. Growing up, I watched weekly as Linda was portrayed as the voice of reason and the only true morally correct individual in the entire family.
Off-camera, though, that reputation is suspect. One of the good things about Vince McMahon’s downfall this year is that long-buried misdeeds have once again come back into the spotlight. One of those misdeeds that recently saw a new lawsuit filed, was the McMahon’s involvement in silencing the victims of the so-called “Ring Boy Scandal” in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.
For context, back in those days, it wasn’t uncommon for children to help set up the wrestling ring before shows. It was the by-product of a different time, as that wouldn’t fly today.
The McMahon’s knew that young ring boys were being sexually abused by three different crew members. They fired those crew members, but later brought two of them back. The biggest offender, ring announcer Mel Phillips, was hired back on the condition that he “stayed away from kids.” Of course, he didn’t do that and the abuse continued.
One victim, Tom Cole, alleged before his 2021 suicide that Linda McMahon manipulated him into silence. He was one of the only named victims, and spoke about his experiences with the McMahons openly before his death.
This entire ring boy scandal resurfacing isn’t necessarily news, as it did come up briefly during Linda McMahon’s vetting process by Trump’s team for the Small Business Administration job in 2017. This time, though, it should sound loud alarm bells for those in education concerned about Title IX protections; if confirmed, McMahon has the power to revise those.
In another unrelated scandal occurring around the same time (that also came up during her first vetting process), Linda McMahon also attempted to hide the rampant steroid use in professional wrestling in the late 1980’s. While it’s obviously not widely known in the wider media ecosystem, McMahon sent what is known in pro wrestling circles as the “Pat Patterson Memo” where she advised employee Pat Patterson (ironically enough, one of the other names implicated in the ring boy scandal) to tip off a company-contracted doctor, George Zahorian, that a criminal investigation into steroid distribution from the Justice Department would be heading his way, advising him to destroy any evidence of involvement with them. The Justice Department, while nabbing their man in Zahorian, failed to nab Vince McMahon on similar charges in court.
Like most of Trump’s picks, McMahon has a complicated history with scandals, specifically those of a sexual nature. While she didn’t commit assault like aborted Attorney General pick Matt Gaetz or Secretary of Defense pick Pete Hegseth (or her husband Vince for that matter), she certainly helped cover it up, just like she attempted to cover up steroid abuse in wrestling.
However, Linda has proven that she can do something that many of Trump’s picks are largely untested in: she can run a government agency. She can run a business. Her time as the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term was uneventful and uncontroversial, and she only left to help Trump run for re-election.
There are many reasons for people to be concerned about the vast majority of these picks by Trump, despite some excitement from those that voted for him. Nearly all of them are problematic. Or they’re Marco Rubio.
Linda McMahon’s nomination, despite some of her questionable scandals, is likely to be confirmed by a Republican Senate majority, and isn’t likely to be as contentious as some of Trump’s other picks.
But unlike Trump’s other picks this time around, she’s also ruthlessly competent. She knows how to bury a scandal in a way that holds for decades. She knows how to work discreetly in the shadows. She knows how to make things go away. Even if the one thing she needs to go away is the Department of Education itself, as Trump proclaimed he wants to see happen.
She’s not Betsy DeVos. She’s a lot worse of a threat, and any teacher worth their paycheck or their salary should be concerned about her. She will carry out Trump’s orders more successfully than many of his other picks will, and she will do it without drawing much of a fuss.
That is, unless the pressure is kept on her to do right by the educators and students that she’s been nominated to serve. That’s up to the people of this country to do so.
