In today’s episode of Trump Is Still Trying To Keep America Dumb For Obvious Reasons, the ex-president made an in-person appearance on Fox & Friends to, once again, float around the idea of shutting down the federal Department of Education to ensure that everything educators are teaching in classrooms is whitey-approved. (He didn’t actually say that last part, but the last few years of anti-woke GOPropaganda proves that’s exactly what he was getting at.)
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“We’re going to take the Department of Education — close it — we’re going to close it,” Trump said of his plans should he be elected to the White House in November.
He also said he would punish schools that teach about slavery. When Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade asked about schools in liberal states or cities teaching that America was “built off the backs of slaves on stolen land”, Trump said they’d be defunded.
“Then we don’t send them money,” replied Trump.
Trump made the same campaign promise last month during a rally in Wisconsin.
“I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” he said, CNN reported. “We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing.”
First of all, neither Trump nor any of his loyal MAGA minions give a damn about students being “indoctrinated” as long as it’s the right kind of doctrine. Indoctrination, in their minds, only happens when kids are being taught about the spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations that exist. To them, it’s indoctrination when students are taught that systemic racism is a thing in a country where Black people were barred from accessing the “American dream” through two and a half centuries of slavery and another century of legally sanctioned second-class citizenship.
However, it wasn’t indoctrination in their minds when Louisiana officially became the first state in U.S. history to require by law that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school in the state from kindergarten through college. It wasn’t indoctrination when Florida education officials approved requirements to teach students that enslaved people benefited from slavery and that Black victims of race massacres also committed acts of violence. Those same officials selected PragerU — an unaccredited conservative non-profit organization founded by a loud and proud racist — to provide classroom materials to Florida schools. PragerU produced animated videos for children that taught, among other things, that Frederick Douglass, a slave-turned-abolitionist, would have agreed with America’s choice to prioritize white supremacy over ending slavery.
Trump, however, hasn’t threatened Florida’s Board of Education with any kind of sanctions under his future presidency, because when he talks about indoctrination, he doesn’t mean white nationalist indoctrination, because that kind of propaganda is his political bread and butter.
What Trump doesn’t seem to understand is that as much as he tries to distance himself from Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s pro-fascism brainchild aimed at permanently MAGA-tizing the federal government once Trump is back in office — he can’t seem to stop saying the Project 2025 part out loud.
One of the tenets of Project 2025 that opponents have highlighted the most is its intent to rid the country of its Department of Education.
Speaking of which, recently, reporters for Hip Hop Hollywood spoke to Black men between the ages of 18-65 and had them read excerpts from the conservative plan for America and share their thoughts on camera. The interviews covered, among other things, the project’s impact on education should it ever be enacted.
You can watch the video below. Spoiler alert: Black men weren’t feeling any of it.