From steel chairs to school chairs, why Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs says Linda McMahon is ready for the Education Secretary title

Glenn Jacobs standing with Linda McMahon (Photo by Glenn Jacobs)

When U.S. Senators approved former professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon to lead the U.S. Department of Education on Monday, Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs was quick to congratulate her.

“Congratulations to my good friend and our new Secretary of Education,” wrote Jacobs on X. “The Department of Education is in great hands under @Linda_McMahon’s leadership.”

Jacobs has known McMahon for decades through his hall of fame career as the wrestler Kane in the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE). McMahon and her husband Vince McMahon bought the WWF in the 80s and Jacobs told the Tennessee Firefly that Linda’s business sense will serve the country well leading the Department of Education.

“Linda is brilliant. When folks think about WWE, they always think about Vince McMahon and the visionary and the entrepreneur of the company which is true, Linda was the business side,” said Jacobs. “She was the person that ran the back office for many years. She was also on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She's been politically active throughout her life, so it was no surprise to me when President Trump deemed her to be his nominee for Secretary of Education. She is an incredibly competent individual, very smart, very sharp.”

During Jacobs’ time as a professional wrestler, he also shared the spotlight with Linda McMahon for one memorable episode of Monday Night Raw, where he executed a piledriver on her.

Jacobs says the idea came from the WWE creative team.

“We have writers at WWE just like other shows do, and it was their idea because my character Kane had just been repackaged and they wanted him basically just to be a monster that didn't recognize any sort of restraints or rules and how better to get that across than to body slam the boss' wife basically,” said Jacobs. “Obviously she’s done some stuff in front of the camera before, she's a good performer, and she was great to work with and just wanted to make sure that everything looked as convincing as possible. My job was to make sure she didn't get hurt so trust me, I took very, very, good care of her making sure that she was okay.”

In professional wrestling, villains like Kane was that night are referred to as “heels,” and some of Linda McMahon’s critics now see her as a heel today because of the role President Trump has outlined for her to dismantle the Department of Education. The department provides more than $800 million to Tennessee alone, including support for students with disabilities, those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and key funding for rural Tennessee school districts. 

“By selecting Linda McMahon, Donald Trump is showing that he could not care less about our students’ futures. Rather than working to strengthen public schools, expand learning opportunities for students, and support educators, McMahon's only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools, where 90% of students - and 95% of students with disabilities – learn, and give them to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools,” said National Education Association President Becky Pringle following McMahon’s appointment last year. 

Dismantling the department would take an act of Congress, where Democrats and some Republicans seem likely to oppose the plan, but even if it were to happen, Jacobs says those who are concerned about the impact on students with special needs, and education itself, are off the mark.

“She's a very compassionate person and again, when we talk about dismantling the Federal Department of Education, no one's talking about doing that at the state level. What we're really talking about is returning the authority and the funding to the states as well and those provisions are already here in Tennessee as well,” said Jacobs. “Change is always difficult and a lot of times when you hear these things you completely freak out because, oh this is going away. No it's not going away. It's being replaced by something else. I graduated high school in 1985, so for the majority of my K -12 experience there was no federal Department of Education and that's true for many people around this country. So, even if the federal Department of Education goes away, that does not mean certainly that the states will not fulfill what we've already been doing in many cases.”

Jacobs says McMahon will also be well served to champion other components of President Trump’s agenda in her new rold.

Jacqueline Clay (left) swearing in Linda McMahon (right) (Photo by the U.S. Department of Education)

She worked in the prior Trump administration as the Administrator of the Small Business Administration.  More recently, McMahon has served as the Chair of the Board at the Trump affiliated America First Policy Institute (AFPI) where she worked on universal school choice initiatives in 12 states.

Jacobs believes school choice will be a big part of her agenda at the Department of Education.

“You know president Trump endorsed Governor Lee's Education Freedom Act, so that's something that we would see more of. I'd like to see personally more CTE, career and technical education, opportunities. When we think about the secondary level and colleges, some changes there as well. We have a desperate need in this country for computer scientists, for engineers, for more technical occupations and I'd really like to see more of our secondary institutions concentrate on those things to make us, the United States, be a viable player in innovation and technology, which is where the global economy is going to,” said Jacobs. “I just think in general you'd see a much more streamlined operation and much less of a bureaucracy than we currently do, and I think that even if the Department of Education stays there, I do think that you would have the states have more say over their education systems.”