MSNBC is reporting that Yankees team president Randy Levine is being considered for President Trump’s vacant Chief of Staff position.
File that under “Weird, but yeah, I can see that.”
Levine has long been active in conservative politics, spending part of his early legal career in the Reagan administration’s justice department. He was also New York City’s Labor Commissioner when Rudy Giuliani was mayor. He has been known to pen conservative columns, some flattering Trump, though not all of them have been complimentary of the president or his policies.
Running a baseball team -- such as Levine even does; there are a lot of cooks in the Yankees’ executive kitchen -- is likely nowhere near the job being the President’s Chief of Staff is. My guess is that Levine likewise has nowhere near the level of rigorous executive organizational experience to prepare him for the gig. Indeed, he strikes me as the kind of guy whose secretary has an elaborate filing system tailored to just his level of organizational dysfunction. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but he sort of fits the type.
Then again, President Trump doesn’t exactly fixate all that much on things like “qualifications” for important positions. My guess is that he likes that Levine is kind of a tough-guy type and that Levine has said some nice things about Trump in his presence in the past and that’s all that really matters. It likewise can’t hurt that, like Trump, Levine tends to lie about easily verifiable things.
Does he get the job? Probably not. And I question whether he’d even take it if offered. Being the Yankees’ president is probably one of the coziest jobs around and doing that makes you far, far more money than being Trump’s punching bag in meetings. Added bonus: far less chance of, you know, getting indicted due to being in the general vicinity of what’s going down in Washington right now.
Fun to think about, though.
