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Lamont says McMahon will struggle to fulfill Trump's education promises

Linda McMahon, former Administrator of Small Business Administration, speaking during the Republican National Convention.
J. Scott Applewhite
/
AP
Linda McMahon, former Administrator of Small Business Administration, speaking during the Republican National Convention.

Gov. Ned Lamont has said he does not expect President-elect Donald Trump’s education policies to change much for Connecticut, despite Trump’s choice of Linda McMahon to head the department.

McMahon is a former wrestling executive who led the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term.

According to Trump's official announcement on Tuesday, she will use her deep understanding of business and education to expand choice and send education back to the United States.

“I like the Department of Education,” Lamont said, speaking to the media at an event in Bridgeport a few hours before McMahon was announced as Trump‘s pick for the job.

He doubts McMahon would be able to fulfill one of Trump’s main campaign promises, which was to get rid of the department.

“They are not going to end the (U.S.) Department of Education,” he said.

“You can push it back into Health and Human Services the way it was in the 70s. You are just sort of rearranging the deck chairs,” Lamont said.

They could send many of the department’s programs back to Health and Human Services, as it was during the Nixon administration, he suggested.

“You are still going to have Title IX. You are still going to have the grants being made. That’s not going to go away. All they are going to do is move it from one building to another,” Lamont said.

McMahon is a longtime Trump donor and co-chair of his transition team. She served on the Connecticut Board of Education for a year and is on the Board of Trustees of Sacred Heart University, the licensee of WSHU.

She also ran and lost two races for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut in 2010 and 2012.

As WSHU Public Radio’s award-winning senior political reporter, Ebong Udoma draws on his extensive tenure to delve deep into state politics during a major election year.