Trump likely to pick Linda McMahon to head education department he wants abolished

Linda McMahon, currently co-chair of Donald Trump’s presidential transition team and wife of WWE co-founder Vince McMahon, is expected to be tapped as secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, an agency Trump has vowed to abolish.

McMahon was slotted in after it became evident that she was not going to be tapped as the secretary of commerce, CNN reported, citing four sources familiar with the matter. That position went to Howard Lutnick, her fellow transition team co-chair and CEO of investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

McMahon headed the Small Business Administration when Trump was president the first time, leaving after two years to helm pro-Trump super PAC America First Action. She serves on the board of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a think tank favoring Trump’s ideas that she formed with several former Trump advisors in 2021.

Under McMahon’s leadership, the AFPI has spent the past three years drafting proposed executive actions, policy memos and other presidential prep in the event of a second Trump term, as Politico noted.

Prior to her work with Trump, the rumored education pick twice ran for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut, losing in both 2010 and 2012.

She also co-founded the WWE with her husband and helped build it into a media monolith.

The McMahons have found themselves at the center of many lawsuits in recent years, including one late last month that accused them of knowingly allowing the sexual abuse of young “ring boys” throughout the 1980s and ‘90s.

According to the suit, the former WWE execs were aware that the organization’s ringside announcer, Mel Phillips, used his prominent position to hire boys as young as 12, often from “broken homes,” who were then were “groomed, exploited and sexually abused by Phillips.”

Vince McMahon resigned from his roles at parent company TKO in January after a former WWE employee accused him of sexual misconduct, though he has vehemently denied all the allegations against him.

With News Wire Services