Linda McMahon, head of the head of the Small Business Administration, appears to be the latest person to leave the Trump administration.
McMahon, who still has a home in Greenwich, is expected to announce Friday she is stepping down as head of the SBA. President Donald Trump is to appear with her this afternoon at Mar-a-Lago where she is expected to announce plans to take a fund-raising role with his reelection campaign.
The SBA provides loan guarantees to small business that might not otherwise qualify for a bank loan. Those SBA-guaranteed loans offer lower payments, longer terms and looser criteria to qualify. The SBA also makes direct, low-interest loans to those businesses impacted by disasters.
McMahon told The Connecticut Mirror that she identifies with the entrepreneurs she tries to help. Like those businessmen and businesswomen, McMahon considers herself and her husband Vince risktakers who have “had plenty of ups and downs.”
The downs included filing for bankruptcy as a young couple in 1976 and briefly receiving food stamps.
After leaving her native North Carolina, McMahon and husband Vince McMahon founded a sports entertainment company that eventually became the Stamford-based World Wrestling Entertainment.
Unlike other cabinet officers who have been scorched by the white-hot light of media scrutiny and Democratic criticism, McMahon has largely avoided negative publicity.
A longtime friend of Trump’s, McMahon donated about $7 billion to a political action committee that supported Trumps’ candidacy for the White House.
McMahon is widely known in Connecticut for her campaigns for U.S. Senate. She spent $50 million on each on two losing U.S. Senate races against Richard Blumenthal in 2010 and Chris Murphy in 2012.
McMahon told the Mirror last year she had “no plans” to run for office again and said she took the top job at the SBA because President Trump asked for her help.
