Trump Looking for Hispanic to Take Agriculture Post

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Politico reports on Donald Trump’s search for a Secretary of Agriculture:

Trump met Wednesday with two Hispanic politicians at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach to discuss the possibility of taking on the agriculture post: Dr. Elsa Murano, a former U.S. agriculture undersecretary for food safety, who is Cuban-American, and Abel Maldonado, a Mexican-American who is a former California lieutenant governor and co-owner of Runway Vineyards.

I imagine Trump’s interior monologue for his cabinet choices has gone something like this:

Lessee. Solid, silver-haired white guy for State. Check. Retired general for Defense. Check. Personal financial crony for Treasury. Check. What else? Teachers are all women, so Betsy is good for Education. Urban is code for black, so Ben will fit in at HUD. Lotta oil wells in Texas, so maybe a Texan for Energy. Perry can do it. Somebody exotic-looking for UN ambassador. Nikki really looks the part. Asians are bad drivers, maybe Elaine can get through to them at Transportation. Fill out the rest with a bunch of dull white guys. I’ll let Pence take care of it. And Agriculture. Hmmm. Gotta be Hispanic, right? They’re the ones who pick all the crops. But who?

If only I were just joking with this.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate