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No one asked, but former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is likely running for president. He’s already used his considerable experience as the nation’s top diplomat to identify the biggest threat to democracy, and it’s a middle-aged Jewish lesbian from New York.
In an interview with David Weigel and Shelby Talcott, Pompeo declared that Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, is the “most dangerous person in the world,” not Vladimir Putin, whom he’s praised as “very shrewd, very capable … elegantly sophisticated … I have enormous respect for him.” That was just a few days before Putin invaded Ukraine.
But Pompeo sees education as the big ticket issue for Republicans in 2024, despite the “groomer” and critical race theory panic sort of flopping for them in 2022.
He told Weigel and Talcott, “The central ideas of America are timeless — limited government, expanded set of freedoms, protecting the capacity of people to practice their faith. The very things I spoke about [at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference] — making sure we don’t teach our kids crap in schools, which we are at the center of doing.”
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“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. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is a bloodthirsty dictator. China is the world’s most surveilled state under Xi Jinping’s command, and a cult of personality surrounds the general secretary.
However, what a normal person might consider obscene character assassination, Pompeo views as not even 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, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing.”
Republicans insist that America’s children are a bunch of woke Ralph Wiggums and they blame the teachers unions and Weingarten specifically. Republicans haven’t just criticized Weingarten professionally but attacked her personally. They don’t really govern so much as demonize, so that tracks. Last year, Sen. Tom Cotton dismissed Weingarten’s 35 years of experience and claimed she knows nothing about education because “she doesn’t even have children of her own.” It’s not the most subtle dig at her sexuality.
Weingarten defends teachers and advances their interests, but she’s not solely responsible for school curricula. However, Republicans like Pompeo suggest that Weingarten has personally scheduled CRT drag shows in elementary schools. Even after the massacre at a LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Republicans won’t turn down the rhetoric. Pompeo shamefully declares that an American educator is a greater threat than foreign dictators.
Pompeo also took a predictable swipe at journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who dared remind people that slavery happened and was bad.
“If our kids don’t grow up understanding America is an exceptional nation, we’re done,” Pompeo whined. “If they think it’s an oppressor class and an oppressed class, if they think the 1619 Project, and we were founded on a racist idea — if those are the things people entered the seventh grade deeply embedded in their understanding of America, it’s difficult to understand how Xi Jinping’s claim that America is in decline won’t prove true.”
Nothing says “American exceptionalism” more than believing the communist dictator when he says America sucks.
Responding on Twitter, Weingarten called out Pompeo’s remarks as either “ridiculous or dangerous.” (They’re both.)
“At the state department, Pompeo defended Middle East’s tyrants and undermined Ukraine,” she tweeted. “He was more focused on pleasing Trump than fighting for freedom, national security and democracy. To compare us to China means he must not know what his own department says.”
And she was just getting started:
So Mike, let me make it easy for you. We fight for freedom, democracy, and an economy that works for all. We fight for what kids and communities need. Strong public schools that are safe and welcoming, where kids learn how to think and work with others. That’s the American Dream!
And we fight against this kind of rhetoric and hate. 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
Weingarten sounds like someone who actually believes in America and its young people. Pompeo is just a cynical bag of wind. The upside is that he’ll probably never see the inside of the White House again.
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