U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he and Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney (not pictured) meet in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 7, 2025. REUTERS Evelyn Hockstein
Wichita Eagle Editor Dion Lefler says a Republican financial bundler is heading off to Washington to slurp up some pubic cash after spending much of his recent career blasting public employees.
“After years of railing against the Deep State, former Kansas Republican Party Chairman Mike Brown is now up to his eyeballs in the swamp Donald Trump keeps promising to drain,” said Lefler. “In a shameless act of political patronage by the Trump Administration, Brown has been appointed as the director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at the U.S. Treasury.”
This is the bureau responsible for the design, print and circulation of the nation’s paper money, and Lefler said Brown will get to oversee the agency putting the “gaudy signature of you-know-who" on our currency, despite a law against putting a living president’s face on U.S. legal tender.
“I was laughing out loud as I read a congratulatory message on Facebook from the Kansas Republican Party, which basically kicked Brown to the curb after two years of his obnoxious and paranoid tenure as party chairman,” said Lefler, pointing out that Brown was “an election conspiracy theorist from the get-go” who lost his seat on the Johnson County Commission in 2020 before barely snagging the job of Kansas GOP chairman in 2023.
But his time as chair was marred by his failed power grab of removing state office holders, members of Congress and representatives of Black, Latino and women’s GOP groups from party committees. Brown also accused his predecessor of stalking him and his wife because the man kept “showing up to the same Republican events as the Browns”— which generally happens with two Republican Party leaders making their rounds.
But lefler has his own issue with Brown, having outed him in 2024 as Donald Trump campaign contribution Bundler #2024027 and for “taking personal credit for contributions that Kansas Republicans made to Trump’s presidential campaign via the state party.”
“In that column, I likened it to you paying for a flight and Brown getting your frequent-flyer miles,” said Lefler. Even then, Lefler pointed out that “bundlers are a special class of political donors who raise large sums of campaign cash through their business and personal connections, for which they are often rewarded with cushy administration jobs.”
And, sure enough, Brown is now headed off to Washington, D.C., to a job that paid his predecessor $200k a year.
“At the time, Brown swore that his only reward would be the satisfaction of helping Trump get elected to a second term,” said Lefler.
