NBC Reporter Gets Schooled by Trump on Dept. of Education Cuts [WATCH]

President Donald Trump defended his administration’s decision to cut nearly half of the workforce at the Department of Education (ED) during an Oval Office meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin on Wednesday.

The move, which eliminated 1,315 of the department’s 4,133 employees, is part of a broader effort to reduce wasteful federal spending and shift education oversight back to the states.

During the meeting, NBC News White House reporter Kelly O’Donnell questioned Trump about the layoffs, asking whether he took responsibility for eliminating the positions of several federal employees.

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“Would you describe for us, is this meeting your vision by cutting about half the workforce and what responsibility do you feel for the civil servants who have now lost their jobs? Many of them worked at the Department of Education during your first term,” O’Donnell asked.

Trump responded by emphasizing that the administration was focused on keeping the best employees while cutting unnecessary or unproductive positions.

“I do, I feel very badly, but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work, unfortunately, and that’s not good,” Trump said.

“And when we cut, you know, we go and that’s what I had a number of meetings with a number of people over the past couple of months, when we cut, we want to cut, but we want to cut the people who aren’t working or not doing a good job. We’re keeping the best people and [Education Secretary] Linda McMahon is a real professional, a very sophisticated businessperson and she cut a large number, but she kept the best people and we’ll see how it all works out.”

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Trump reiterated his position that the U.S. education system is failing at a national level and should be returned to state control.

“We have a dream, and you know what the dream is? We’re gonna move the Department of Education, we’re gonna move education into the states. So that the states, instead of the bureaucrats working in Washington, so that the states can run education,” Trump said.

Trump pointed to education systems in other countries, arguing that local control would improve performance.

“And, you have Norway, you have Denmark, you have Sweden, you have various countries that do very well. You also have China which does very well in education, and that’s a very big tribute to China, I must say … So we can’t blame size, anymore. Normally you would blame size, [the U.S.] is too big, how can you [fix education].”

“But China does it, so we think when you move it back to Iowa and Indiana and all the states that run so well … those will be as good as Denmark, those will be as good as Norway, as good as any,” Trump continued.

A senior ED official told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the department’s staffing cuts are part of a long-term strategy to give more power to state governments over education policy.

The decision to reduce ED’s workforce comes as student performance continues to decline despite record levels of federal spending.

Federal, state, and local governments collectively spend approximately $857.2 billion on K-12 public education annually.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government allocated $190 billion in aid to schools, yet academic performance has not improved.

A report from The Nation’s Report Card in January 2024 found that one-third of eighth graders failed to reach the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading benchmark, marking the worst results ever recorded. Additionally, 40% of fourth-grade students tested below the NAEP’s reading proficiency level.

A New York Times analysis in March found that since the pandemic, students fell behind in math by more than half a year, while also struggling in reading and science.

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that students in remote learning settings performed worse on standardized tests than those who were allowed in-person learning.

Trump has previously expressed support for shutting down the Department of Education entirely, arguing that education policy should be controlled at the state level rather than by federal bureaucrats.

His push for decentralization has drawn backlash from Democratic lawmakers, who attempted to enter the ED building in protest on February 7 following his announcement of planned cuts.

As the administration moves forward with its plan, the debate over the federal government’s role in education is likely to continue, with Republicans pushing for state-level control and Democrats resisting cuts to federal oversight.

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