I first met Donald Trump when I was the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. For fun, he became part of some of the most compelling and highest rated [00:00:15] storylines in the company's history. And when he became president, I was honored to serve in his cabinet running the Small Business Administration. Well, and now Linda McMahon, the woman you just heard from, will very likely serve [00:00:32] as the Department of Education secretary under the Trump administration. Trump has chosen her to lead in that role. And while she very likely holds all sorts of beliefs and political views that the left is against that I myself am against, [00:00:51] a deep dive into her past shows that she's a bit of a mixed bag, and more importantly, she's not Betsy DeVos. Okay. I say that because Betsy DeVos Divorce was in fact an ideologue. Betsy DeVos ran with a bunch of bad dudes, and I'm not kidding about that. [00:01:09] She was a huge fan of for profit colleges, including for profit colleges that were proven to defraud students. Okay. She essentially decided to unwind or reverse some of the efforts that [00:01:25] the Obama administration made in order to protect Americans from these predatory, for profit colleges, which typically, provide, if you finish their programs, an unaccredited degree, that means nothing, but they tend to saddle their students with an insane amount of debt [00:01:44] that's funded by the federal government. Right. These are federal loans that we're talking about. The majority of their revenue came from the federal government in the form of student loans that were issued to their students, and their degrees meant absolutely nothing. Okay. Unaccredited institutions in their recruiting practices, they would [00:02:02] also lie to students about what kind of gainful employment they can expect with the degrees that they were going to earn. I mean, just absolutely lowest of the low business model. And Betsy DeVos invited them to be part of the Education department [00:02:19] under the Trump administration. So the fact that the new education secretary isn't going to be Betsy DeVos is already a win. Okay. But she's also not an ideologue, right? So Linda McMahon, not some ideologue, you know, doesn't have these, like, hardcore [00:02:34] views on dismantling the education system. So that's also good news. But there are some downsides as well, obviously, which we'll talk about in just a minute. Now, before we get to that, I was very curious to see how Randi Weingarten felt about this pick. And so I went on the American Federation of Teachers website [00:02:51] and was happy to see that there was a statement from Randi Weingarten. And so, if you're unfamiliar. Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers. And here's what she wrote. We are pleased that Linda McMahon wanted to read, wanted to teach in her early life, [00:03:07] and that her work on the Connecticut State Board of Education led to her interest in literacy and building career pathways. We will try to work with anyone who puts the aspirations of our students, families, and communities first. We look forward to learning more about Linda McMahon and if she is confirmed, we [00:03:26] will reach out to her as we did with Betsy DeVos at the beginning of her tenure. We hope Donald Trump means it when he says he wants to focus on project based instruction, career and technical education, and apprenticeships. [00:03:41] This will improve education and job options, making schools more relevant and engaging for young people. Now, to be clear, you know, Linda McMahon doesn't really have a lot of experience or much of a history working in education. [00:03:57] But that might actually be a good thing since, again, she's clearly not an ideologue in this area. And Trump's former education secretary, Betsy DeVos, Absolutely. Absolutely was. And, you know, one of Trump's stated goals is to essentially empower states [00:04:13] to take more control over, you know, public education and things like that. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. We kind of have to wait and see how that's played out or going to play out. But let's let's get to some more details about her experience in education. So yes, her husband, you know, started, you know, this wrestling empire. [00:04:35] And so she was part of that for a while. She served as an executive in that arena. But before that she actually did have some experience, you know, in politics and specifically in education. So she was appointed to the state Board of Education by Governor Jodi Rell in January of 2009. [00:04:52] The state Senate in Connecticut actually approved her nomination by a vote of 34 to 1. And so that was the state Senate. The House, approved her 96 to 45, but she actually did have to resign [00:05:07] from this board a little over a year after serving within it, because she decided to run for Senate. And while she's running for, you know, Senate, a Senate seat in the state of Connecticut, she's asking for campaign donations. And it was determined that state law prevented her from serving in this [00:05:26] education board while soliciting donations as she was running for the Senate. So she had to step down. After a little over a year prior to that, she launched the Get Real program to deliver positive messages about education to young people, [00:05:41] and the program encouraged literacy through public service announcements, posters and bookmarks like featuring wrestling superstars, and it apparently was successful. The American Library Association noted that the WWF Know Your Role poster [00:05:58] was the highest selling poster for two straight months. She also served on the board of the Close Close Up Foundation, which is a nonprofit that offers youth field trips to Washington, D.C. So honestly, that was the extent of her experience in education. [00:06:14] Not a lot. So I want to be clear about that. But she did also serve in Trump's first term. And so she supported Donald Trump's presidential aspirations from the very beginning. And that was rewarded with a role in his first term. [00:06:29] In 2016, McMahon donated $6 million to the pro-Trump Rebuilding America Now PAC super PAC, and between 2015 and 2016, she contributed a total of $1.2 million to future 45, which is another super PAC that funded Anti-bernie Sanders advertisements. [00:06:50] She is not anywhere near Bernie Sanders when it comes to economic policy, and I want to be clear about that. She favors tax cuts. And she did not like Bernie, did not like what he espoused. So something to keep in mind. She also previously served in the Trump White House as the administrator [00:07:06] of the Small Business Administration. She was approved by the Senate 81 to 19, so she didn't have much difficulty getting confirmed. And I was curious how she performed in that role, especially because, you know, I see some of these appointments as rewards for donating to Donald Trump's campaign. [00:07:27] Right. And so I was like, how how good was she at this job? So I came across, a piece that was written by the Washington Post after she served in that role for a year. They just kind of did an evaluation of how she was performing, and here's what they wrote. The agency is on track to back more than $30 billion in loans, which she says [00:07:47] has helped create more than 650,000 jobs. Included in the number are $500 million in loans given to women entrepreneurs. Growth in some of its programs, like its seven A loans where small businesses can borrow up to $5 million to purchase machinery, [00:08:07] furniture, fixtures, supplies and other materials has exceeded 20% this past quarter as compared to the same period last year. So, you know, she was through her role as the leader of this government agency. She ensured that small businesses got a little more support [00:08:24] in terms of, you know, the capital necessary to stay afloat, to expand. And they also write that the agency has come a long way since its since 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster, when many were critical of the government's slow response times. [00:08:40] After last year's storms hit, McMahon turned parts of their offices into an emergency call center and brought on more than 3000 additional people to handle the added workload. And so she was actually pretty effective in that role. [00:08:57] I don't know how effective she would be as education secretary, especially considering the lack of experience now. She ended up stepping down from her role as the Small Business Administration administrator, in March of 2019 to essentially work on Donald Trump's reelection campaign, and [00:09:15] at that time she was named the chairwoman of the America First Action Super PAC. So I do think that, you know, Trump is putting people who are very supportive of him, you know, throughout his political career in these roles. So it goes back to what I've said about Trump before. [00:09:33] He's very transactional. So you do him a favor. He'll probably look out for you to some extent. And we're seeing that play out in some of these appointments. Now, back in 2009, McMahon left World Wrestling Entertainment to run for Senate seats. She ran for the first Senate seat in Connecticut, [00:09:50] and she campaigned on lower taxes, fiscal conservatism, and job creation. She ran as a moderate, though, so she noted that she's pro-choice while also opposing partial birth abortion and also federal funding for abortions. [00:10:06] Overall, the Hatch Act is still there, right? So even Joe Biden has said he's in favor of the Hatch Act and preventing federal funds from, you funding abortions. But she did lose to the Democrat in the general, Richard Blumenthal. [00:10:22] And then later she ran for the other Senate seat out of Connecticut. She was the Republican nominee. This is in 2012, but she lost to Chris Murphy. So that's, you know, just like a rundown of who she is, what she represents. I think that she's going to be better than Betsy DeVos, specifically because she's [00:10:42] not in bed with these for profit colleges. And I don't know how she's going to carry out this role. We'll definitely keep an eye on her. But I think out of, you know, all the different people who have been appointed by Donald Trump, she's very likely going to breeze through confirmation and we'll see how she does in this role. [00:11:00] We'll definitely keep an eye on it and cover anything she might do, whether it's good or bad. So buckle up. Brace for impact. Thanks for watching. If you become a member, you get to watch all this ad free. Except for of course, this ad still hit the join button below.