Trump’s Pick For Education Secretary Has Been Named In A Sexual Abuse Lawsuit
Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump smeared educators and teachers who support the LGTBQ+ community, accusing them of being child predators. But this week, he nominated Linda McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, to head the Department of Education ― even though she is being sued for allegedly allowing the sexual abuse of children.
The lawsuit, filed last month on behalf of five unnamed individuals, alleges that McMahon, along with her husband Vince McMahon, the president of World Wrestling Entertainment, and WWE’s parent company, TKO Holdings, knowingly allowed WWE ringside announcer Mel Phillips Jr. to sexually abuse children between the 1970s and the 1990s.
McMahon is the latest of Trump’s administration picks to be reportedly involved in a sexual abuse scandal.
Her nomination comes amid an ongoing Republican-led assault on the nation’s public schools, as well as the spread of baseless claims that legions of public-school educators are grooming and indoctrinating children.
Conservatives have claimed that books with LGBTQ+ themes are actually pornographic material, and that LGBTQ+ teachers, and teachers who support their LGBTQ+ students, are sexualizing children. Declaring themselves the champions of “parental rights,” they have fought to have books banned from classrooms and censor what teachers can say about sexual orientation and gender identity. It has become a defining issue for the Republican Party.
The lawsuit against the McMahons alleges that they knew Phillips was using his power as the ringside crew chief to lure young boys to work with the promise of getting to meet famous wrestlers. According to the suit, the so-called “ring boys” would be hired to run tasks and errands to keep the wrestling production going. The suit claims that the McMahons knew about the abuse in the 1980s, but still allowed it to happen. Phillips died in 2012.
A lawyer for the McMahons has denied the allegations in the suit.
“More than 30 years ago, the columnist Phil Mushnick tried to make headlines with these same false claims,” Jessica Rosenberg told NBC News last month, referring to a New York Post columnist who wrote about the allegations in the 1990s. “Those allegations were never proven and ultimately became the subject of a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Mushnick. We will vigorously defend Mr. McMahon and are confident the court will find that these claims are untrue and unfounded.”
McMahon’s experience in education is limited at best. In 2009, then-Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell (R) appointed her to serve on the state Board of Education. In a questionnaire for the role, McMahon reportedly lied about having a bachelor’s degree in education.
Still, Trump allies and conservative groups are voicing their support for McMahon, including Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a far-right group that has been a leader in the right’s war on public schools.
“Parental involvement is the number one driver of kids’ success in school and I will help the incoming Secretary any way I can to ensure parents get back in the driver’s seat of their child’s education,” Justice said in a statement.
“Linda has a difficult task ahead in fighting the union’s death-grip over the education industrial complex but I am confident in the plans laid out by President Trump to make wholesale change that empowers parents and improves the math and reading scores of our kids too,” she continued.
Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration, calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, which Trump also promised to do on the campaign trail. Instead, schools would be funded by local taxpayers and an expansion of voucher programs that use public money for private schools.
The drastic move would be political poison to both sides of the aisle, and is unlikely to happen. The threat to the department is born out of Republicans’ insistence that DOE is “indoctrinating” children ― but the agency is not responsible for setting school curricula. Its main responsibilities are to oversee funding for low-income schools and resources for students with disabilities, and to protect the civil rights of students.
McMahon, if confirmed by the Senate, is likely to champion the idea that the department has pursued a nefarious agenda. She served as the head of Trump’s Small Business Administration in his first term before resigning to work on his reelection campaign. She also began chairing the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank that drew up a framework for a second Trump term that rivals Project 2025.
Educators are already sounding the alarm about Trump’s choice to put McMahon at the helm of public education.
“By selecting Linda McMahon, Donald Trump is showing that he could not care less about our students’ futures,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Educators Association, said in a statement. “Rather than working to strengthen public schools, expand learning opportunities for students, and support educators, McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools, where 90% of students ― and 95% of students with disabilities ― learn, and give them to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools.”
