Teachers' union president suggests criticism against her incites violence: 'It will lead to violence'

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, suggested on Tuesday that criticism against her is an incitement of violence.

What is the background?

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is testing the waters for a 2024 presidential campaign.

Over the weekend, he said one of the most important issues facing Americans is education, and a central tenant of his campaign will be "making sure we don’t teach our kids crap in schools."

He then laid into AFT President Weingarten, who leads the second-largest teachers' union in the U.S.

"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 [ATF president] Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call," Pompeo told Semafor.

"If you ask, 'Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?' It would be the teachers' unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing," he continued.

"If our kids don’t grow up understanding America is an exceptional nation, we’re done," Pompeo declared. "If they think it’s an oppressor class and an oppressed class, if they think the 1619 Project, and we were founded on a racist idea — if those are the things people entered the seventh grade deeply embedded in their understanding of America, it’s difficult to understand how Xi Jinping’s claim that America is in decline won’t prove true."

How did Weingarten respond?

Weingarten responded by accusing Pompeo of fomenting "hate and division," rhetoric she claimed will "lead to violence."

The teachers' union president, in fact, said that Republican opposition to teachers indoctrinating young children with the progressive LGBT agenda, in general, is dangerous.

"He needs to fund his campaign," Weingarten told Semafor of Pompeo's comments. "He doesn’t have a base so he is trying to get millions from the anti-union, anti-public-education billionaires like Betsy DeVos."

"Pompeo is desperate to be labeled as the extremist in the Republican presidential primary," she added. "He's using the same strategy, the extremists' strategy that didn't work for them in 2018, 2020, and ’22. And he's flooding the zone with disinformation. And what's dangerous about that is that it will lead to violence. He's decided to use his campaign to foment hate and division."

Pompeo has not yet announced a presidential campaign.