A few weeks ago, I noted that Linda McMahon and Andrew Puzder quite clearly paid for their cabinet positions:
Broken Laughter will continue to do research on this and will update this post with the new information as it becomes available, but of the recent Trump Cabinet selections made, here are two who clearly bought their seats in the Trump administration:
Linda McMahon bought her appointment to the Trump administration: between 2007 and 2009, she and her husband gave $5 million to the Trump “Foundation.” Between August and September 2016, they donated $6 million to his campaign super PAC.
Andrew Puzder also bought his place in the Trump Cabinet. Puzder is Trump’s pick for Labor Secretary and CEO of Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr., restaurants. During the 2016 election cycle, Puzder and his wife gave more than $300,000 to Mr. Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee.
Before I continue, I will acknowledge that it’s not unusual for high-dollar donors to receive ambassadorships in a new administration, and often a few Cabinet positions go to big-money contributors. But, the Trump Cabinet is quite pregnant with high-rolling supporters of Trump, his campaign, the Republican Party or the Trump Slush Fund — I mean, Trump Foundation. I’m not sure how this aligns with Trump’s criticism that Hillary Clinton was too close to big-money politicians and business executives, and that he was going to “drain the swamp.”
Oh, I remember, his policy is “the ends justifies the means,” meaning that we should not have taken anything he said during the campaign seriously — he was saying whatever he needed to say in order to cause enough people to vote for him that he would win the election. It’s very likely, therefore, that he uttered about 80% more lies during his campaign than he would have uttered if he hadn’t been following the “whatever it takes to win” approach. Integrity, trustworthiness and honesty be damned, according to Trump.
Upon examining the histories of other members of Trump’s Cabinet, I have found that several other people received their appointments because they gave money to either Trump’s campaign or the Trump Slush Fund (oops, there I go again), I mean, Trump Foundation.
For example:
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Education Secretary, has given, through her husband and family, $1.8 million to the Republican Party and the Trump Campaign. The DeVoses have also given many millions more dollars in years past.
Todd Ricketts — who Trump selected as Deputy Commerce Secretary — helped fund a PAC that spent many dollars for the Trump campaign, and his father, Joe, gave the group $1 million. In addition, Joe and his wife also contributed about $343.000 to the Trump campaign and the Republican Party.
More to come, but before I go off to celebrate the dawning of 2017, I wanted to post this update.