Trump Finally Nominates A Black Person To Serve In His Cabinet
Executive Director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council Scott Turner speaks as U.S. President Donald Trump and senior adviser Jared Kushner listen during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on May 18, 2020, in Washington, D.C. | Source: Getty Images / Getty
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday night announced that he was nominating Scott Turner to be the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), marking the first selection of a Black person to serve in the upcoming presidential administration.
Trump announced in an email:
I am pleased to nominate Scott Turner, from the Great State of Texas, as the Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Scott is an NFL Veteran, who, during my First Term, served as the First Executive Director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council (WHORC), helping to lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our Country’s most distressed communities. Those efforts, working together with former HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, were maximized by Scott’s guidance in overseeing 16 Federal Agencies which implemented more than 200 policy actions furthering Economic Development. Under Scott’s leadership, Opportunity Zones received over $50 Billion Dollars in Private Investment!
After graduating from University of Illinois, Scott was drafted by the Washington Redskins, and spent nine years in the NFL before he went on to win a State House Race in Texas, where he was born and raised.
Scott is the Founder & CEO of his Family’s Foundation, Community Engagement & Opportunity Council (CEOC), working to revitalize communities across America through Sports, Mentorship, and Economic Opportunity. He is also on the Board of the American Cornerstone Institute, and an Associate Pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church.
Scott will work alongside me to Make America Great Again for EVERY American. Congratulations to Scott, his wonderful wife, Robin, and his son, Solomon!
White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council Executive Director Scott Turner (R) speaks at the invitation of President Donald Trump during the National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Conference at the Renaissance Hotel on September 10, 2019, in Washington, D.C. | Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty
Read more about Turner by clicking here.
The announcement came after calls grew for Trump to pick a Black person following two weeks of nominations that excluded any person of Black heritage, including a handful of suspected white supremacists and other extremists.
In fact, there was a question of whether there were any “Black jobs” in Trump’s second administration, considering the people he’s surrounded himself with, including people who refer to gainfully employed Black people as “DEI hires.”
Namely, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds were both cozying up to Trump during the election cycle in a likely effort to jockey for a position in his administration. Thus far, they and several other notable Black Trump supporters have effectively been snubbed and left out of the equation of cabinet members and the most senior presidential advisers.
Instead, Trump opted to go with Turner, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from 2012 to 2019, when he was appointed to lead the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council.
If confirmed, Turner would succeed Adrianne Todman, the Deputy HUD Secretary who was named acting HUD Secretary when then-HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, the former longtime Congresswoman from Ohio, unexpectedly resigned in March.
Not for nothing, HUD is the one federal agency that has had the most Black secretaries of them all.
HUD was first formed in 1965, and the following year its first Secretary — a Black man — was confirmed. Since Robert Weaver’s tenure leading HUD, the agency has had five other Black secretaries, including Ben Carson, who served in Trump’s first administration.
That number could grow to six if Turner is confirmed.
This is a developing story that will be updated.
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