President Trump is calling for the end of the U.S. Department of Education, but so have other Republicans since the day it was formed in 1979. So why do Republicans hate it enough to lambast it, but love it enough to keep it around?Brittany is joined by NPR's education correspondent Cory Turner and author Josephine Riesman to talk about Trump's pick for education secretary, former WWE CEO Linda McMahon. And how Trump and McMahon are using the WWE playbook to reshape the American public education system.For more on this topic check out Cory's latest piece for NPR, Republicans' love/hate relationship with the Education Department, and Josie's investigation into the WWE, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.Support public media and receive ad-free listening & bonus content. Join NPR+ today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: How are public education and WWE connected?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. All right, everybody. This week, you and I are connecting the dots between public education, Ronald Reagan, and the WWE. I know. I know. How are all of these things connected?
Well, we are going to find out with NPR's education correspondent, Corey Turner, and bestselling author, Josephine Reisman. Corey, Josie, welcome to It's Been a Minute. Oh, it's great to be here. Perfect.
Thanks for having me, Brittany. Yes.
Okay, so which one of these battles do you think you are more likely to win? A congressional confirmation hearing or a WWE wrestling showdown? I myself personally, the showdown, I think I would win. I think I have big face energy. To use some wrestling terminology, I think I have big face energy.
Chapter 2: What historical context shapes the education department's debate?
I don't know you that well, but you have great baby face energy. The crowd is behind you.
Yeah, I wouldn't want to do either. I'm just going to bow out of both.
All right, I'll accept the cop out. I'll accept the cop out.
Thank you.
Luckily, this isn't a battle at all. It's just a good old conversation about what could happen to our nation's education system if former WWE CEO and co-founder Linda McMahon is confirmed as the Secretary of Education. And to start,
I want you to remember this, that for every time President Trump does something unprecedented, he's also doing something that's been done over and over and over again in American politics. Because just like fashion, our politics are always getting recycled. And right now, what's getting rehashed is a nearly half-centuries-old debate over the U.S. Department of Education.
Now, for those of you who don't know, the Department of Education was established under President Jimmy Carter in 1979. And the very next year, in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was running for president, he pledged to dismantle it, calling the department President Carter's new bureaucratic boondoggle. Gotta bring that word back, boondoggle. Just listen to Reagan's State of the Union address in 1982.
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Chapter 3: What is the Republican perspective on the Department of Education?
The budget plan I submit to you on February 8th will realize major savings by dismantling the Departments of Energy and Education.
Sounds a lot like President Trump when he pledged to close the department in office and on the campaign trail.
And I'm going to close the Department of Education and move education back to the states. And we're going to do it fast.
Republicans have been dogging the Department of Education for decades, but none of them have ever actually dismantled it. Because when it comes down to it, they do seem to like it. So today, I want us to look at this love-hate relationship Republicans have for the department and how this debate looks a lot like a WWE wrestling match. How it's real and how it isn't. So, Corey, help me out here.
What do Republicans hate about the Department of Education?
The easiest answer to that question is they hate the way Democrats in particular have used the department as kind of a cudgel to pursue liberal or progressive items on their agenda. I think the best, most recent example is Republicans were really angry with President Biden when
When he tried to expand protections under federal civil rights law known as Title IX, he tried to expand protections for transgender students. And Republicans saw that as a blatant overreach.
Now, on the flip side, what do Republicans love about the Department of Education?
I think the most important thing to talk about here is the Department of Education manages two enormous and enormously important pots of money that go to our public schools. One helps pay for special education through a federal law known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
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Chapter 4: Why do Republicans love and hate the Department of Education?
And so Title I is the federal government's response to that imbalance. And there's no difference between a school in a high poverty urban district and a high poverty rural Alabama district, which is actually where I am right now, Brittany. They both get Title I money. And so what do Republicans love or at least appreciate value about the department? It is that money.
Well, to stay on this topic of love, hate, tension, that specific tension was on full display at the confirmation hearing for President Trump's pick for education secretary, Linda McMahon. Josie, you've written a whole book about Linda's husband, Vince McMahon, and his reign over his company, World Wrestling Entertainment, aka the WWE.
Yes.
Vince McMahon has been in the limelight for decades. Much more so than Linda, though she has been a part of storylines on the WWE.
No, she's kept a lower profile. You're absolutely right.
I want to know, what do we need to know about Linda McMahon? And since she's slated to be the next secretary of education, can you tell us, like, who is she? What's her worldview?
Well, it's funny. Linda McMahon doesn't really want you to know anything about Linda McMahon. That has been true for a long time. From what I could glean in my research, this is not a woman who opens up to virtually anyone. When she speaks, as you can see at the confirmation hearings, she uses sort of these kindly buzzwords that dance around what she's actually saying.
And from the best I can tell, based on her actions, what really seems to motivate this woman who grew up as a upper middle class girl in New Bern, North Carolina, is the dream of just security, wealth and power. It's kind of boring, unlike, say, Pete Hegseth or any number of other bombastic personalities who Trump has nominated for key cabinet positions.
Linda has long been a master of this mask, this mask of I'm a kindly grandmother. who wants to be nice to you. I'll be a mother figure. I'm a good administrator. I run business as well. When in reality, the fact is she's the hatchet woman and will do what Trump, who she's known since 1981, tells her to do. Hmm.
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Chapter 5: Who is Linda McMahon and what is her role?
Hold on.
Education is not in the Constitution. The only federal right to an education... is afforded to kids with disabilities through the IDEA. Wow. That is so interesting. I did not know that.
I didn't know that either.
Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Wow. It was not that long ago. IDEA is 50 years old this year when children with disabilities were turned away from public schools. Period. End of story. Gosh. Circling back to your question about Linda McMahon, she was asked a question about helping children with dyslexia. She did not reference IDEA.
She did not reference any of the protections afforded to children through IDEA. She simply said would need to receive.
Well, thank you very much, Chairman Cassidy, and I know this is a very... I'm sorry.
It's your daughter.
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Chapter 6: What happened during Linda McMahon's confirmation hearing?
But I certainly very much would like to be sure that we are looking to diagnose issues like dyslexia early because we have found that it can be turned around. So I'd like to work with you and understand how we could have a better approach.
It was actually a fairly generic response.
Yeah, I was going to say that sounds like a non-answer. Okay, okay. Now, I want to take us back to something you brought up a minute ago, Josie. The fact that Donald Trump and Linda and Vince McMahon have known each other for a very long time, since the 1980s. Yeah. Basically, since the time... that the Department of Education was born.
I mean... According to Linda, the Trumps and the McMahons first met at a Rolling Stones concert in New Jersey in 1981.
Wow. Sorry, that is a mental picture.
It's possibly the most boomer thing you can imagine.
Obviously, that meeting has led to a lengthy relationship. I mean, Trump appeared in a WWE wrestling match.
Oh, you're underplaying it.
He's had storylines.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of Trump's relationship with WWE?
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Josie, for you having researched the McMahons and Trump's long history together, what's an example of how Trump and the McMahons share a similar worldview? I mean, I don't know. I've heard you say before that Trump answers... Vince McMahon's phone calls differently. Well, at least used to.
But at least as of the first Trump term, there were two people in the world that Trump would take personal phone calls from and kick everybody else out of the room so he could talk to them in private. Usually Trump likes putting people on speaker. It doesn't matter if it's like the chancellor of Germany. or a pro golfer he knew.
He likes to showboat, but there are two people he gets everyone out of the room so he can have a confidential conversation with. One is Mark Burnett, the producer of The Apprentice, and the other is Vince McMahon.
Gosh, thinking about the length of this relationship, you know, starting in the 80s and extending all the way to today, fast-forwarding to the presidential election, 2024, last year, Josie, there was this moment when we saw... The intersection between education policy and the WWE and Trump and the WWE wrestler The Undertaker all converge in a surprising way just mere days before the election.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I don't want to assume, but I don't know if everybody who's listening to this show is an Undertaker listener as well.
Right. So Mark Calloway, the man who used to wrestle as the famous wrestler The Undertaker – He has a podcast, and he is a Republican, and he had Trump on a few days before the election. If you watch it, you see Trump immediately turn the interview around and just ask Undertaker excited childlike questions about what pro wrestling is like.
How often did it – I mean I know you're supposed to interview me, but I find it very interesting. How often did it happen where somebody gets really angry? In other words, you hit a guy accidentally the wrong way or something, and –
And he's had it. Because that's how much Donald Trump is obsessed with pro wrestling and has been since he was about nine years old. So that's interesting. But what you're talking about is at the end, the undertaker, Mark Calloway, he brings out his teenage daughter.
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