After naming GOP funder Charles Herbster to be chair of his Agricultural and Rural Ag Committee, Trump has nominated Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller to be co-chair, says Mother Jones—and the press is waiting for the antics to begin. Miller, who is almost never seen without his white cowboy hat, has a reputation for spending taxpayer money on personal activities, including traveling to Oklahoma for a medical procedure called the “Jesus Shot,” administered by a convicted felon named Dr. Mike.
Before he was a politician, Miller was a champion rodeo roper. Now he runs a landscaping-nursery business, a cow-calf breeding operation, and grows cereal grains. According to the Environmental Working Group, his farm operations took in about $124,000 in farm subsidies between 1995 and 2014.
“His tenure as Texas ag commissioner has been a ride worthy of one of his beloved rodeos,” says Mother Jones. “Soon after taking office, Miller launched a campaign to make public schools safe spaces for junk food, granting “amnesty” to cupcakes and reversing bans on deep-fat fryers and soda machines. He grabbed headlines for handing plum state jobs to campaign contributors, and for comparing Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes on Facebook and suggesting nuclear bombs be dropped on Muslim countries.”
On a Texas radio show, Miller didn’t give many details as to what he would do on the committee, but said that he was opposed to “over-regulation” and expected Trump to rope in the EPA, the Endangered Species Act and the Bureau of Land Management.