Photo : Chip Somodevilla ( Getty

Sports genius Donald Trump has done the inevitable, again. This time, the big lad has put his close personal friend Bill Belichick on an official Presidential council. Shockingly, Belichick will not be in charge of any nuclear weaponry or an actual department of significance, which honestly would have made as much sense as anything the Trump administration has done. But New England’s ebullient mastermind is one of the 20 appointees to Trump’s President’s Council on Sport, Fitness, and Nutrition, which will be co-chaired by Mariano Rivera, volleyball legend Misty May-Treanor, and Herschel Walker. The list includes a list of Trump-supporting sports-doers like retired outfielder and conditioner advocate Johnny Damon, golfer Natalie Gulbis, and Olympic wrestler Kyle Snyder. There are also loads of the snake oil salesman and flatulent monied Trump buddies that have defined the hiring practices of this particular White House. The list is as follows:


Lou Ferrigno is an obvious standout, here. The steroid-aficionado bodybuilder is chiefly famous as the hulking meatpile of a man who competed with Arnold Schwarzenegger during the 1970's, most memorably in the seminal bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron. I use “hulking” literally, in his case, since Ferrigno also played the Incredible Hulk on CBS’ The Incredible Hulk for five seasons (a role he beat Schwarzenegger out for). Ferrigno later became a (literal) cop and vocal Trump guy, the most important qualifications that could possibly exist for such a job.

Then we have Dr. Oz, who is famously full of shit and has spent his decades on TV peddling fake miracle weight loss pills and other pseudoscientific nonsense. The Senate grilled him in 2014 for overpromising on various miracle cures, and he’s admitted that the purpose of his supposedly medically focused show is “not to talk about medicine” but to discuss “the good life.” A classic mixup! He’s still not necessarily any less qualified Lou Ferrigno, really.


Anyway, as someone from the world of daytime television, Oz is obviously another perfect candidate.

Nobody else on the council is quite as silly a figure as Ferrigno or as transparently doing a public grift as Oz, but there are some other gems studded in there. Trevor Drinkwater is the CEO of Genius Products, an entertainment distributor based in Souther California; you may remember him as the dude who helped set up a business relationship between his then-employee Steve Bannon and Harvey Weinstein. Samuel Worthington is the owner of a Pennsylvania athletic club that once hosted a Trump fundraiser, which is the silliest reason ever to get onto an official presidential council. Stephen Soloway appears to be here presumably because he’s a rheumatologist and definitely because he buys a lot of Trump properties. Chris Tisi is the CEO of Slimfast and the owner of a supplement company and Matthew Hesse is the CEO of Corr-Jensen, which makes Ab-Cuts and has been hit with a consumer fraud class action lawsuit. I can’t think of a more on-the-nose understanding of what Trump understands a fitness expert to be than a rich guy who sells weight loss bullshit.

Poor Don Jr., who was passed over despite some serious sporting bona fides.