Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ) mocked a recent speech by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten in a recent appearance on Fox Business's Bottom Line, jokingly calling it "a wonderful dance behind the microphone."
Weingarten recently gave a press conference after the Trump Administration threatened to withdraw federal funding to Columbia University for its failure to contain the anti-Israel protests on campus last year, prompting lawsuits from the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors.
"That is McCarthyism, not patriotism," Weingarten dramatically declared, adding, "Like [Charles] Darwin, like [Albert] Einstein, we are standing in the breach to fight for knowledge, to fight for our young people, to fight for an America that is that robust country on the hill, that beacon of life, that believes in freedom and justice for all."
Host Dagen McDowell jokingly said Rep. Biggs was brought on as "the Randi Weingarten interpreter" to clarify the AFT President's remarks.
"She is talking about primarily that she is the head of the teachers' union," Rep. Biggs suggested, "and she wants to keep getting paid as the head of the teachers' union. She is talking about protecting the union, not educating children, not protecting students."
The Arizona Congressman further called Weingarten's speech "one of the most comically ironic speeches I have seen in quite a while because I do not think she believes anything, of those are really the words that she thinks mean something to us, she does not accept them."
"We do [emphasis his] want our children to be safe, we want them to go to school, we want them to be educated. Education is the great equalizer," Biggs continued, laughing, "But heavens to Betsy, she does not want to face the fact that there is actually a problem with the teachers' union."
After all, he concluded, Columbia and other universities have an "antisemitism wing that is going on" and "faculties off the hinge and uncorked. And I think we just saw a wonderful dance behind the microphone by Randi Weingarten."
