Tim Kaine Grills Trump Nominee On His Social Media Post About 'Conspiracy' On K-12 Teachers

2 days ago

During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) questioned Trump nominee Reed Rubinstein about his comments made on social media.

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00:00you for stating that. Mr. Rubenstein, in March of 2024, you posted on LinkedIn that, quote,

00:07K-12 teachers are almost all products of extreme left teachers training programs in the colleges.

00:15Then the same leftist anti-semi professors provide summer training on MENA and other

00:19issues. The system is not fixable. A lot of us on the committee have

00:27parents, spouses, kids who are K-12 teachers who work in education programs training K-12

00:35teachers. A lot of us, like me, were governors appointing boards of universities with intimate

00:41knowledge of teacher training programs. There can be a bad apple in any organization,

00:46but I got to say I read a comment like that about K-12 teachers are almost all products

00:57of extreme left-wing teacher training programs, and it strikes me along the lines of what Senator

01:02Shaheen was asking. It's kind of a political fantasy or a conspiracy that doesn't really

01:08seem like the kind of thing that a careful lawyer offering narrow advice would say.

01:14Um, you know, I think lawyers usually have narrow brushes in the paint kit and not only big broad

01:19brushes to smear everyone. How could I, how can I square a comment like that with your

01:26suggestion that you're going to provide careful and narrow legal advice, should you be confirmed?

01:31Thank you for that question, Senator. As it happens, I too am a product of a public school

01:39teacher. My mom, who I mentioned, taught in the Detroit public school system for almost five

01:55decades. The post that you're referring to, again, is advocacy, not legal advice. There's a

02:02difference, number one. Number two, when I went to the Department of Education, and this has

02:08nothing to do with the Department of State, but I'm addressing your question, it gave me a real

02:16window into what's happening in the state of U.S. education. I was not an education lawyer.

02:24Uh, I was sent there to run the office, which I did, and to take care of some other things that

02:29we also did related, you know, primarily to China and whatnot. Um, and in talking to the people

02:38there and observing kind of the flow of things coming into the office of the general counsel,

02:42we began to see issues arising. And the way it was expressed, both by career, mostly by political,

02:49but also by some of the careers, is that the way that we train teachers in this country

02:55has some real issues, and that often teacher colleges in public education are very ideological.

03:03I'm over my time, so let me just conclude and say this. Now you're giving a careful answer.

03:09There are some issues. There are some circumstances. Not virtually everybody is a

03:15victim of left-wing indoctrination. And I will just conclude by saying what you hear

03:21within the Department of Education here might look very different, spending time around the country

03:28and in the schools that actually train our K-12 teachers, and that wouldn't be your future job,

03:34but I would encourage you to spend some time outside of Washington. With that, I yield back.

03:39Senator, I would agree with you that, uh, um, I would agree with you that our teachers,

03:46you know, have a very hard job, and they do the best that they can.

03:52Thank you very much, Senator Keene.

Tim Kaine Grills Trump Nominee On His Social Media Post About 'Conspiracy' On K-12 Teachers

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