Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate and longtime Clinton foot soldier Terry McAuliffe said at a recent debate that parents shouldn’t have input on what schools teach their children.
He was not vague when he expressed frustration with the parents who oppose the teaching of critical race theory and sexually explicit materials. There was nothing ambiguous about what McAuliffe said.
But leave it to CNN and its guests to attempt damage control for the Democratic candidate.
“McAuliffe misspoke! McAuliffe is being taken out of context! McAuliffe is being unfairly edited!”
Anything but accepting the fact that McAuliffe has backed himself into a losing position.
“Terry McAuliffe has sometimes let the tongue get out ahead of the brain,” said CNN’s John King.
He added, “Terry McAuliffe would like to clean up his words again … but it is difficult in a state where a close election will be determined in the fast-growing Northern Virginia suburbs where you have a lot of parents and a lot of debate about critical race theory and what’s being taught in schools, to have a candidate for governor say, ‘I don’t want to listen to parents,’ or, ‘I would go side with teachers over parents.’ Stepping in it.”
Axios Managing Editor Margaret Talev agreed, saying McAuliffe’s remarks were “clearly a misstep.”
For the record, here is what McAuliffe said at the debate: “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and take books out and make their own decision. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
“Misstep” seems an awfully generous way to characterize a Democratic candidate unambiguously promoting a position everyone with a working brain knows will lose at the ballot box.
At CNN, the spin continued, as Axios’s Talev assured viewers that no K-12 school in the United States teaches critical race theory. This may come as a surprise to the New Jersey mother who was sued by the state’s teachers union after she requested information regarding the gender identity and critical race theory materials her public school planned to push on her child. This may also come as a surprise to the Loudoun County teacher who resigned specifically because the school district has incorporated critical race theory into the curricula.
This is to say nothing of the parents who are not blind and can see their children’s curricula have been crafted with an eye toward incorporating many, if not all, of the major tenets of critical race theory.
“Let’s just say for the record, in case anyone doesn’t know, they don’t teach critical race theory to kids in kids’ K-12 schools,” said Talev. “That’s not a thing anywhere in the country, including Virginia.”
King quipped, “Only for a Republican candidate.”
“It is hotly debated but not actually a thing,” Talev continued. “Look, it sounds like what McAuliffe is trying to say [is], ‘I’m not going to let irresponsible parents who are against science terrorize school administrators and to make your kids unsafe.’ That’s actually not what he says. It’s just not what he said at all so, of course, it will be used against him.”
McAuliffe didn’t say this obviously more defensible (but still incorrect) thing, but I am going to suggest he did anyway. And if anyone disagrees, they’re obviously taking his not-comments out of context.
This is a real thing being argued in real time by real journalists.
“That’s the world we live in, right?” opined King. “Anything you say can and will be edited and used against you, and, well, maybe it’s a little out of context.”
No, the world we live in is the one where journalists will quietly dismiss what a politician actually said and then suggest he meant to say something much more reasonable, and then have the temerity to suggest it’s the Democratic candidate’s opponents who are disingenuous!
King is right when he says it’s a sad state of affairs Virginians now find themselves in, but it’s not because of anything McAuliffe’s opponents have done.
