WASHINGTON (AP) — Long before he was the top official at the U.S. Postal Service, David Steiner was a corporate executive surfing mid-oughts television when he came across Donald Trump on “The Apprentice.”
He was unimpressed.
“If that is leadership, if that’s what we’re telling people that our culture and our media portrays as leadership, we’re screwed,” Steiner, then the CEO of Waste Management, said during a 2007 speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. “If that’s leadership, count me out.”
“And for God’s sake,” he added to laughter, “if I have to get my hair to look like that, if I have to do that to be a leader, you can definitely count me out.”
Nearly two decades later, Trump has migrated from reality television to the presidency. And onetime detractors — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for example — now loyally execute his agenda.
Trump’s effort to use the Postal Service as a tool to reshape American elections is testing whether Steiner will follow a similar path.
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