President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Linda McMahon, wife of World Wrestling Entertainment founder Vince McMahon, is his nominee to head the Small Business Administration.
“Linda has a tremendous background and is widely recognized as one of the country’s top female executives advising businesses around the globe. She helped grow WWE from a modest 13-person operation to a publicly traded global enterprise with more than 800 employees in offices worldwide. Linda is going to be a phenomenal leader and champion for small businesses and unleash America’s entrepreneurial spirit all across the country,” Trump said.
“Our small businesses are the largest source of job creation in our country,” McMahon said. “I am honored to join the incredibly impressive economic team that President-elect Trump has assembled to ensure that we promote our country’s small businesses and help them grow and thrive.”
She has long had an interest in politics, having run for the Senate in her home state of Connecticut in 2010 and 2012, but fell short despite spending millions of her own money in each effort. She has remained active in Republican politics, co-hosting fundraising committees for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s Leadership Matters for America PAC. She and her husband rank 20th on the Center for Responsive Politics’ “top outside donors” list for 2016, having given $8.6 million to conservative groups in the last election cycle and another $1 million to candidates and parties.
House Small Business Committee Chairman Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, called McMahon an “excellent pick” and said he would work with her and the new administration “to roll back burdensome regulations and increase access to capital for America’s 28 million small businesses.”
Trump has been an occasional participant in some of the WWE’s Wrestlemania events. In 2007, Trump “tackled” Vince McMahon, forcing the wrestling mogul to get his head shaved by Trump.
