Allegedly didn’t know energy secretary post included nuclear-weapons oversight.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Rick Perry, who when he ran for president previously forgot the name of the Department of Energy during a debate, reportedly didn’t know what the job would entail when President-elect Donald Trump selected him for the position in his administration. He is said to have believed the job would only involve him in issues related to the U.S. oil and gas industry and didn’t know it also entailed maintaining the nation’s nuclear stockpile. “If you asked him on that first day he said yes, he would have said, ‘I want to be an advocate for energy,’” Michael McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist who advised Perry’s 2016 presidential campaign and worked on the Trump transition’s Energy Department team in its early days told The New York Times. “If you asked him now, he’d say, ‘I’m serious about the challenges facing the nuclear complex.’ It’s been a learning curve.”
