Trump Secretary Linda McMahon's Marriage Was Haunted By Her Husband's Affairs

Before she was the U.S. Secretary of Education under President Donald Trump, or even the administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration during Trump's first term in office, Linda McMahon was a key executive at WWE, the pro-wrestling company once controlled by her husband, Vince McMahon. To that end, it's no wonder that Linda found herself in Trump's cabinet, given the president's wild TV past with Vince. That being said, Linda's attorney confirmed in late 2024 that she and Vince were separated — an announcement that came in the wake of the sexual abuse allegations that ousted Vince from WWE. Long before the scandal, however, there were signs that Vince and Linda's marriage was never going to last. The most glaring of these was most likely the fact that, over the course of their marriage, Vince engaged in multiple affairs which would come to haunt Linda.

We mean it when we say "fact," since Vince himself admitted to repeatedly cheating on Linda during a 2001 interview with Playboy. "I probably lied to myself, thinking she knew who I was when we got married. The wild guy," Vince said, adding, "But I never, ever threw anything in her face. I was discreet. ... But one day she asked me, point-blank, 'Are you having an affair with so-and-so?' And I've never lied to her. 'Yes.' It crushed her. Then she asked, 'What about such and such?' 'Yes.' It went on. More names. I said, 'Yes, yes and yes.'" Vince went on to claim that he had been faithful to Linda for six years at the time of the interview, but the damage was evidently done.

Affairs are one thing, but with far more serious allegations about Vince McMahon coming to light in recent years, it seems that Linda McMahon has well and truly washed her hands of her former beau. Vince's initial exit from WWE came in 2022 amid an internal investigation into hush-money payments Vince allegedly made to a former employee, ostensibly to cover up another affair. Mind you, this was before new details about the case came to light in 2024, with said employee suing Vince for sexual abuse. But even back in 2022, it was clear that Linda wouldn't touch the matter with a 10-foot pole; after all, she has enough scandals of her own.

Shortly after Vince announced his retirement in July of 2022, reporter Nicholas Ballasy tried to get Linda's take on the news at a political event, only for Linda to abruptly cut him off and shut down the question. "I'm not going to talk about Vince and WWE," she said. When pressed, she remarked that Vince "will just be deciding on how he's going to spend his free time." She then blew off a follow-up question regarding the investigation. With that in mind, it wasn't much of a surprise when Linda announcing her separation from Vince two years later — especially not for the pro-wrestling community. During a July 2022 episode of his "Drive-Thru" podcast, former WWE employee Jim Cornette, who left the company in 2005, implied that things between Vince and Linda were already distant during his time working for them, as he says he rarely ever saw them in the same place at the same time.