Opinion

Mike Pompeo: I challenge Randi Weingarten — the most dangerous person in the US — to debate me

“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,” Mike Pompeo told Semafor two weeks ago. “It’s not a close call.” Here, the former secretary of state and director of the CIA stands by his words and offers a challenge to Weingarten.

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.

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.

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Pompeo believes Weingarten and other teachers union heads post a far greater risk to the country's future than foreign dictators.
Pompeo believes Weingarten and other teachers’ union heads pose a far greater risk to the country’s future than foreign dictators.REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Pompeo explained that threats from abroad like North Korea's missile program don't compare to threats to America's decline caused by teachers unions.
Pompeo explained that threats from abroad like North Korea’s missile program don’t compare to threats to America’s decline caused by teachers unions.Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP
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Pompeo said it's not a close call between Weingarten and adversaries like Xi Jinping.
Pompeo said it’s not a close call between Weingarten and adversaries like Xi Jinping.Photo by BAY ISMOYO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
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Xi Jinping steals American jobs and technology as he poisons our nation through the provision of fentanyl. Vladimir Putin plots the destruction of NATO. Kim Jong Un improves his missiles. The Taliban plot acts of terror. Iran’s leaders order the murder of innocent women while its military amasses the components necessary to manufacture a nuclear bomb.

As secretary of state, I fought these threats beyond America’s borders. Now we must confront American decline at home.

As James Madison stated, “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”

This observation must be heeded, for as historian Will Durant critiqued, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

I believe the future of our republic will not be written by our enemies. Indeed, America is more likely to be lost if we do not retake our schools from radical and progressive forces. Elements in our midst are betraying our children’s futures by denying them the opportunities education confers. Failing to teach math, science, real history and civics and, importantly, to imprint America as the most exceptional nation in civilizational history on the hearts and minds of the next generation dooms America and the world that counts on us.

As living rooms became classrooms during the pandemic, Weingarten demanded more obedience. Parents witnessed the failures of an educational system that allows students to be placed last. Our nation’s teachers do not wish to fail their students. Most are wonderful, industrious people forced to deviate from teaching core subjects to focus on issues that activists prize.

Despite those teachers’ efforts, students in China now outscore our children across the board. America’s students are severely deficient in mathematics and science, vital in our technological age. Nations that spend a fraction of our per-pupil costs outpace the United States in educational attainment. The Program for International Student Assessment recently evaluated more than 70 countries: American students ranked 35th in mathematics, 16th in science and 11th in reading, behind China, Estonia, Poland, the Republic of Korea and other nations. All of this on Weingarten’s watch.

Pompeo claims that Weingarten and unions placed students last during the COVID-19 pandemic. Christopher Dolan/The Times-Tribune via AP
American students had severe drop-offs in math and reading due to COVID-19 school closures. Getty Images

And it’s now worse. That assessment was conducted before the school lockdowns Weingarten helped engineer. The National Assessment of Educational Progress released the Nation’s Report Card for 2022: It recorded the largest-ever drop in mathematics scores. Interminable lockdowns and wokeness-focused curricula led to the most significant decline in test marks since records have been kept. Our students were deprived of crucial in-person support.

America cannot remain the world’s leading economic and political force if these results continue. If the United States should fail because of the deficits induced by Weingarten and those who enable her quest to change the nature of our country, the world will enter a phase dominated by tyrants. Our alliances will be jeopardized, for self-interests will propel nations to partner with others not in decline.

This focus on indoctrination over education is why Weingarten and the leftist establishment she represents are so dangerous; their malfeasance directly empowers Xi, Putin, and Ali Khamenei, who look to our schools to accelerate the decline upon which they build their global narrative.

Education is vital to making the American Dream possible for our children to attain. If institutions betray student and parental trust, we must build new avenues for true learning to flourish.

Parents must be empowered to make educational choices for their children — not the government or teachers’ unions. We must reward great teachers and fire those who are deficient, but this is something Weingarten will not allow, for the imposition of mediocrity defends her purview. Parents must insist on change: Students must come first, not the defense of incompetent teachers within a broken system.

Critical race theory and the 1619 Project derive from Marxist precepts; they do not reflect the greatness and the power of the American experiment. Today, only 1 in 3 Americans could pass the citizenship test. The absence of the “reverence for the Constitution and its Laws,” to quote Abraham Lincoln, risks what he called “mobocratic” rule. These repudiations of our nation foster division and ignorance, not reconciliation.

Students will not fulfill their ambitions through diversity training based on the color of their skin or their religion. They will realize their dreams in the world’s interconnected economy by being able to compete successfully with young people in every other nation. To do so, they must comprehend the legacy they inherit.

Pompeo believes schools need to be teaching students about American exceptionalism. Getty Images

America’s founding was a watershed in world history. Our nation is exceptional. China, Russia and Iran destroy human initiative; America allows it to flourish.

We must initiate new modes of teaching and not wallow in failure. Educational success does not accrue from compounding mistakes: It results from excising constraints so that new growth can occur. Public schools must be required to compete for students with charter, private and religious schools, in addition to homeschooling, for competition improves performance.

President Biden should demand a renaissance in America’s schools, but he is too indebted to Weingarten, her union and other special interests to do his job. The result is a circus of malpractice that is robbing our children of their future and puts the very concept of America as laid out in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution at risk.

Who are the beneficiaries of Weingarten’s vision of education? Union bosses. Bureaucrats who multiply beyond function — and our adversaries. What Xi, Putin and Khamenei could never accomplish on the battlefield they are reaping in our classrooms.

If Weingarten and her ilk continue to control our schools and universities, we will lose our country, for it will become indefensible. She dissembles, knowing that an echoic media will front for her.

I look forward to the opportunity to defend our republic against the America-hating left that has occupied the commanding heights of our schools as opposed to the parents who so desperately need teachers to stay on mission.

Therefore, will you, Randi Weingarten, accept my challenge to debate?