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On Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced the nomination of WWE cofounder Linda McMahon as the next Secretary of Education.
Should McMahon’s appointment receive congressional approval, she would be tasked with administering Trump’s plan of shutting down the Department of Education. She will also have significant influence over the enforcement of Title IX, the gender equity law in college sports.
While McMahon left her role as the president and CEO of the WWE in 2009, she, alongside her husband, Vince McMahon, was integral in the company’s rise to become the most prominent wrestling promotion in the world—even amid several scandals that loom over the company to this day.
The Early Days
Linda McMahon, born Linda Marie Edwards, met Vince McMahon when she was 13 years old and he was 16. They married following her high school graduation in 1966.
Vince, the son of a famous wrestling promoter, assumed various roles for his father’s Capitol Wrestling Corporation. The couple founded Titan Sports together in 1980 and acquired his father’s promotion in 1982.
The McMahons dismantled the unwritten rule among wrestling promotions to keep events regional, venturing outside of the Northeast and poaching wrestlers from other companies. The risk proved to be the first major step in what is now known as World Wrestling Entertainment, developing into a billion-dollar business.
Linda’s WWE Role
Linda served mostly behind the scenes for the nearly 30 years she was with the WWE. Vince made the creative decisions and played himself in several on-air storylines, while Linda focused on bolstering other points of growth like merchandise sales. She did occasionally appear on television, including when she was on the receiving end of a piledriver from Glenn Jacobs, known in wrestling as Kane, who has served as the Republican mayor of Knox County, Tenn., since 2018.
Trump was the subject of a WWE storyline in 2007, which culminated in a “Battle of the Billionaires” match in Wrestlemania 23, where Trump and Vince were both represented by professional wrestlers in the ring.
One of the biggest scandals during Linda’s tenure with the WWE related to steroids and the health and wellness of wrestlers. The first case came in 1993 when Vince was charged on suspicion of supplying steroids to professional wrestlers. The case was dismissed in July 1994.
The WWE faced a congressional inquiry in 2007 following the murder-suicide of Chris Benoit, who, in the 2000s, was one of the faces of the company. While the inquiry did not lead to a court case, the spotlight was on the WWE to properly implement its wellness program and was a catalyst for many of the changes today, including the ban of the aforementioned piledriver and steel chair shots to the head.
The promotion has also faced several cases involving sexual abuse. Linda was named a defendant in a case filed in October by five former “Ring Boys” who say the McMahons “knowingly allowed” a former ringside announcer to sexually abuse them in the 1990s.
In 2016, former WWE star Ashley Massaro alleged she was sexually assaulted at a U.S. military base in Iraq during a WWE live show in 2006 when Linda was still with the WWE. Massaro died in 2019, but an affidavit was released in February when she detailed incidents of sexual assault against her during her WWE tenure, particularly by Vince.
In January, a lawsuit filed by Janel Grant alleged “physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault and trafficking at WWE,” though Linda was no longer with the company during the time frame of the abuse.
Post-WWE
Linda attempted two campaigns for the U.S. Senate seats in Connecticut, but she lost both times. In 2009, she claimed she had a bachelor’s degree in education on a questionnaire for a Connecticut Board of Education role—but it was reported as an error by the Hartford Courant before her first senate campaign.
It was uncovered in 2018 that she had received a degree in French and a teaching certificate from East Carolina University. The longtime Trump supporter was appointed as the head of the Small Business Administration in 2017 during his first term.
