Former President Barack Obama condemned Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin for focusing on hot-button education issues during the campaign, dismissing those issues as unserious and “fake outrage.” Virginia parents and parent advocates shot back at Obama’s remarks, calling them “tone deaf” and “clueless.”
“We don’t have time to be wasting on these phony trumped-up culture wars, this fake outrage that right-wing media peddles to juice their ratings,” Obama said while campaigning for Democrat Terry McAuliffe on Saturday. He accused Youngkin of avoiding “serious problems that affect serious people” and suggested that outrage over the actions of school boards is unjustified.
“Instead of stoking anger aimed at school boards and administrators, who are just trying to keep our kids safe,… we should be making it easier for teachers and schools to give our kids the world-class education they deserve, and do to so safely while they are in the classroom,” Obama said.
Parents did not take kindly to Obama’s remarks.
“That is the most tone-deaf statement I have ever heard,” Brandon Michon, a frustrated father of three in Loudoun County, Virginia, told Fox News on Sunday. “First and foremost, everything that has come up with the cover-up in Loudoun County has to do with a sexual assault on girls. To say that this is trumped-up as a political thing is laughable.”
Michon referenced allegations that Loudoun County Superintendent Scott Ziegler and the school board covered up the report that a male student in a skirt allegedly assaulted a female student in a girls’ bathroom – while the board was considering a controversial transgender rule. A bombshell email last week revealed that Ziegler had notified the board about the assault about a month before he publicly declared that he had no record of bathroom assaults. Prosecutors confirmed that the same young man who stands accused in that May incident also stands accused of sexual assault in an October incident in another school.
Parents have demanded the resignations of Ziegler and the board, and Youngkin has joined them in those demands.