Trump restocked the swamp

Tom Harnisch

Neillsville

Editor:

Remember the promise about “draining the swamp and getting Wall Street money out of government”? The swamp got deeper and thicker on Trump’s watch.

When Sonny Perdue was nominated to be Secretary of Agriculture, an environmental watchdog group said, “This isn’t like draining the swamp, this is like putting the original swamp monster in charge.” Perdue is an agribusiness tycoon and is infamous among struggling Wisconsin dairy farmers for offering the encouraging words, “In America the big get bigger and the small go out.”

Betsy DeVoss, Trump’s Secretary of Education, is a billionaire with six yachts scattered around the world. She has no teaching degree or teaching experience, has never attended a public school, did not send her children to public school, and supports funding for for-profit private schools over public schools. She donated $9.5 million to Trump’s campaign.

Andrew Wheeler, Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency, was a lobbyist for the coal industry. He recently approved plans to drill for gas and oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a move worth billions of dollars to special interest groups and a promise of irreparable harm to the environment his agency is supposed to protect.

Most recently Louis DeJoy was appointed as Postmaster General after contributing $1.2 million to the Trump campaign, managing fundraising for the GOP National Convention, and donating millions of dollars to Republican campaigns. DeJoy was heavily invested in XPO and Amazon, both large contractors with the U.S. Postal Service. He is allowed to keep $30 million in XPO stock. He was ordered to sell his Amazon stock, then given an option to buy it back at half its current value. These glaring conflicts of interest were ignored.

Trump’s entire cabinet is occupied by “swamp monsters” and is a classic example of promises not kept. Trump is a proven leader for your readers that are multi-millionaires, but he does not represent the rest of us.