In a recent interview with Semafor, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out at the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, calling Randi Weingarten the “most dangerous person in the world.”
“I tell the story often — I get asked, ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’ The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten,” Pompeo said.
He added: “It’s not a close call. If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teacher’s unions and the filth that they’re teaching our kids,” said the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under former President Donald Trump.
RELATED STORY: Worst former secretary of education Betsy DeVos wants to get rid of department she led
Weingarten has served as the president of AFT-CIO since 2008. According to the AFT website, in addition to teachers, the union represents “paraprofessionals and school-related personnel; higher education faculty and staff; nurses and other healthcare professionals; local, state, and federal government employees; and early childhood educators.”
It’s difficult to believe that after his days at the CIA, Pompeo actually believes that the head of a teachers union could be so threatening to democracy. I have a few ideas about some folks who are a lot more threatening.
Let’s start with Pompeo’s former boss, who, I don’t know, launched an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Or maybe all of the white supremacist terrorists in the U.S. who open fire on Black and LGBTQ communities. Or maybe any of the other heads of countries who start mindless wars, slaughtering innocent people. How much time did this guy spend in the CIA?
Weingarten responded on Twitter, saying she didn’t know whether to characterize the interview as “ridiculous or dangerous.”
“At the state department, Pompeo defended Middle East’s tyrants & undermined Ukraine. He was more focused on pleasing Trump than fighting 4 freedom, national security & democracy. To compare us to China means he must not know what his own department says,” she wrote.
“Maybe spend a minute in one of the classrooms with my members and their students and you will get a real lesson in the promise and potential of America.”
Campaign Action
As The Hill reports, education was one of the top issues for voters during the 2022 midterms, and the GOP has certainly made it their mission to try to grab curriculum across the nation by the p***y.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Parental Rights in Education” law, which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, banning teachers from instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. Not to mention his war on critical race theory, which, for the millionth time, is a legal concept taught only in college-level law education classes and has never once been taught in any K-12 classroom on earth.
In April, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed seven different education bills tackling the GOP’s top boogeymen: critical race theory, sex education, and sports for trans students.
The Republican Party has been targeting education since Trump appointed Betsy DeVos, the most unqualified person for the job, to lead the Education Department.
In July, DeVos, who’s not an educator and has never taught in a classroom, proclaimed in a summit in Florida that the U.S. schools should be run by individual states and not the Department of Education.
“I personally think the Department of Education should not exist,” DeVos told the uber-conservative audience in attendance, the Florida Phoenix reported.
In an August interview with USA TODAY, Weingarten said attacks on teachers have never been “as bad as right now.”
“People had a different view of how to do education, but there was not this attack on people’s basic humanity. This is really new,” Weingarten said.
Behind much of the GOP and right-wing attacks on public schools is a tiny Christian school in southern Michigan called Hillsdale College. It is quite literally at the epicenter of book-banning movements, anti-vaxxer conspiracies, critical race theory communities, climate science deniers, and Republican legislators.
Hillsdale College offers school boards and right-wing policymakers a template for conservative curriculums and attacks on liberalism. The institution espouses that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a hoax and that, according to outstanding reporting from Salon, Russian president Vladimir Putin is a “hero to populist conservatives around the world.”
Hillsdale’s “patriotic education,” aka the 1776 Curriculum, is at the base of what many conservative school board members want in place of the books they’re banning and the “CRT” they’re making illegal to teach.
In September 2021, Pompeo was a keynote speaker at Hillsdale College.
We beat back the so-called Red Wave, but our job is not done. Daily Kos is determined to help us win Georgia, and is pouring resources. Please donate $5 today
Donald Trump and his MAGA allies came close to overthrowing our democracy, and they will try again. We must do all we can to get out the Democratic vote in Georgia. Click here to find all the volunteer opportunities available!
“I tell the story often — I get asked, ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’ The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten,” Pompeo said.
He added: “It’s not a close call. If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teacher’s unions and the filth that they’re teaching our kids,” said the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under former President Donald Trump.
RELATED STORY: Worst former secretary of education Betsy DeVos wants to get rid of department she led
Weingarten has served as the president of AFT-CIO since 2008. According to the AFT website, in addition to teachers, the union represents “paraprofessionals and school-related personnel; higher education faculty and staff; nurses and other healthcare professionals; local, state, and federal government employees; and early childhood educators.”
It’s difficult to believe that after his days at the CIA, Pompeo actually believes that the head of a teachers union could be so threatening to democracy. I have a few ideas about some folks who are a lot more threatening.
Let’s start with Pompeo’s former boss, who, I don’t know, launched an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Or maybe all of the white supremacist terrorists in the U.S. who open fire on Black and LGBTQ communities. Or maybe any of the other heads of countries who start mindless wars, slaughtering innocent people. How much time did this guy spend in the CIA?
Weingarten responded on Twitter, saying she didn’t know whether to characterize the interview as “ridiculous or dangerous.”
“At the state department, Pompeo defended Middle East’s tyrants & undermined Ukraine. He was more focused on pleasing Trump than fighting 4 freedom, national security & democracy. To compare us to China means he must not know what his own department says,” she wrote.
“Maybe spend a minute in one of the classrooms with my members and their students and you will get a real lesson in the promise and potential of America.”
Campaign Action
As The Hill reports, education was one of the top issues for voters during the 2022 midterms, and the GOP has certainly made it their mission to try to grab curriculum across the nation by the p***y.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Parental Rights in Education” law, which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, banning teachers from instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. Not to mention his war on critical race theory, which, for the millionth time, is a legal concept taught only in college-level law education classes and has never once been taught in any K-12 classroom on earth.
In April, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed seven different education bills tackling the GOP’s top boogeymen: critical race theory, sex education, and sports for trans students.
The Republican Party has been targeting education since Trump appointed Betsy DeVos, the most unqualified person for the job, to lead the Education Department.
In July, DeVos, who’s not an educator and has never taught in a classroom, proclaimed in a summit in Florida that the U.S. schools should be run by individual states and not the Department of Education.
“I personally think the Department of Education should not exist,” DeVos told the uber-conservative audience in attendance, the Florida Phoenix reported.
In an August interview with USA TODAY, Weingarten said attacks on teachers have never been “as bad as right now.”
“People had a different view of how to do education, but there was not this attack on people’s basic humanity. This is really new,” Weingarten said.
Behind much of the GOP and right-wing attacks on public schools is a tiny Christian school in southern Michigan called Hillsdale College. It is quite literally at the epicenter of book-banning movements, anti-vaxxer conspiracies, critical race theory communities, climate science deniers, and Republican legislators.
Hillsdale College offers school boards and right-wing policymakers a template for conservative curriculums and attacks on liberalism. The institution espouses that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a hoax and that, according to outstanding reporting from Salon, Russian president Vladimir Putin is a “hero to populist conservatives around the world.”
Hillsdale’s “patriotic education,” aka the 1776 Curriculum, is at the base of what many conservative school board members want in place of the books they’re banning and the “CRT” they’re making illegal to teach.
In September 2021, Pompeo was a keynote speaker at Hillsdale College.
We beat back the so-called Red Wave, but our job is not done. Daily Kos is determined to help us win Georgia, and is pouring resources. Please donate $5 today
Donald Trump and his MAGA allies came close to overthrowing our democracy, and they will try again. We must do all we can to get out the Democratic vote in Georgia. Click here to find all the volunteer opportunities available!