During a Fox News Sunday interview today, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pretended he had not dangerously called teachers union president Randi Weingarten “the most dangerous person in the world.”
In case you missed it, in an interview published by Semafor on November 21, Pompeo said this (my emphases added below and everywhere else the text is bold):
“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. 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, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing. These are the things that candidates should speak to in a way that says, “Here’s the problem. Here’s a proposal for how to solve it. And if given the opportunity, these are the things I will go work on to try and deliver that outcome that fixes that problem.” Pretty straightforward stuff.”
It's one thing to vehemently oppose Weingarten’s policies but calling her “the most dangerous person in the world?” Even if Pompeo thinks so, using such inflammatory, demonizing language can get someone killed.
About a week later, Pompeo’s revisionist history appeared in a column he wrote for the Murdoch-owned New York Post (the paper doing its darnedest to push Donald Trump off the political stage). in the column, Pompeo first shrank Weingarten’s supposedly worldwide evil to a national version. He now called her “the most dangerous person in America.”
“I fear America is on a path to disintegration due to persistent failures in our education system. American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten and her fellow travelers have crippled our nation’s schools. The danger she presents to our nation is clear and real and exceeds that of all the bad guys I battled abroad for four years as secretary of state and CIA director. I said she’s the most dangerous person in America because it is true. Her power, her ideas and her anti-student policies must be confronted.”
Then he pretended he was the victim of her smears.
Weingarten has called this claim “pathetic” and insinuated that I, having made it, am “extreme,” “anti-LGBTQ” and “anti-Semitic.” She suggested my work as America’s most senior diplomat was a failure when in fact we made America far safer and more prosperous than President Biden has been able to do.
Her personal venom evidences an unwillingness to defend what she has wrought on our children and our nation. I am prepared to debate her and to present to the American people my case for the risks she presents to our republic and our nation’s future.
Bream is not a bad anchor but she clearly thought her role was to help Pompeo rehab that ugly chapter, if not help promote his presidential run. Here’s how she began the portion of the interview about Weingarten.
BREAM: You're apparently in a thing with Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. She says that you called her the most dangerous person in the world and writes this in the New York Post: "What's truly outrageous are the other things he said, calling what educators do, quote, filth, and, quote, propaganda. And in doing so, he personally insulted the nation builders of the very American democracy he claims to cherish.
She says she won't debate you but she'll invite you to go visit schools with her. Will you go?
Either Bream didn’t bother to fact check that Pompeo had indeed called Weingarten the most dangerous person in the world or Bream deliberately cast doubt on whether Pompeo had uttered that vile smear.
Pompeo listened to Bream with a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile. Then he replied by pretending that Weingarten had started the feud, once again playing the victim and without taking any responsibility for his incendiary rhetoric.
POMPEO: Happy to go to a school with her, and then we should immediately head to the debate stage to share with the American people what the teachers unions are doing to our kids.
Shannon, it's a -- it's disastrous. She wanted to keep the schools closed until we got to zero COVID. She said that if we didn't teach our kids -- our little kids, about sex in the schools, that this was going to create a civil war in America.
She has done personal attacks on me and on so many others who simply want our kids to learn to read, to write, to do -- to be creative, to think logically. We don't want to foist woke ideology into our schools.
She -- the teachers unions have now undermined American education. I called her out for that and we ought to have this debate.
Shannon, there's no need to attack me. There's no need to attack her. Let's talk about what we're going to teach our kids, why America is a great country and we shouldn't teach in our schools it is a racist nation.
Rather than reveal the truth to viewers, Bream let Pompeo’s misrepresentation of his own aggression go unchallenged, thus validating another Weingarten smear.
Instead, Bream went on to press Pompeo to say when he’ll announce his 2024 intentions. Spoiler alert: in the spring.
You can watch “pro-life” Pompeo's total indifference to Weingarten's personal welfare below, from the December 11, 2022 Fox News Sunday.