‘Morning Joe’ panelist baselessly claims Trump is nixing Education Department because he wants dumb voters

MSNBC contributor Anand Giridharadas claimed on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s plans to shutter the Department of Education (ED) were part of an effort to prevent an “educated citizenry.”

ED announced it had reduced its workforce by almost 50% on March 13 between voluntary buyouts and layoffs. Giridharadas said that Republicans wanted to keep voters from understanding issues like climate change and entitlements after “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough claimed states couldn’t be “trusted” to handle education without federal oversight, citing past problems with Medicaid.

“In ‘94, the argument was, we’re going to take money and power and authority and put it as close to the classrooms as possible. This is an old idea. The Department of Education started, I think, in 1979, 1980, Ronald Reagan immediately said, let’s keep education on state levels and local levels. And again, push as much money, power, and authority there,” Scarborough said. We’ve just seen, though, over the past 40 years that actually some coordination from Washington works. And conservative George W. Bush actually was very effective pushing standards that a lot of people in the education establishment didn’t like.”

WATCH:

“But by doing that from Washington, D.C., you actually did get scores that went up. While, again, a lot of people in the education establishment were kicking and screaming,” Scarborough continued. “And on top of that, we have learned a lot of states can’t even be trusted to take Medicaid. A lot of governors can’t even be trusted to take Medicaid to take care of their poorest, to take care of middle-class families.”

Math and reading scores saw their biggest drop in 50 years, according to data released in 2023 by the National Center for Education Statistics. Trump has also argued that ED has failed, saying he wanted to move education “back to the states” during a Feb. 26 Cabinet meeting.

Trump campaigned on eliminating the federal agency during his presidential campaigns. After Scarborough made more comments dismissing the ability of states to handle education and Medicaid, Giridharadas chimed in with his theory.

“I think in the modern incarnation of cutting this, they are revealing something to citizens, which is they don’t want the most educated citizenry possible, because it’s not helpful to them. People who can read and understand that climate change is happening are not favorable voters for them,” Giridharadas claimed. “People who can read and understand what they’re doing to Medicaid, to Social Security, what Elon Musk is doing, the better your reading comprehension is, the more you might not like what this administration is doing. So an educated citizenry is not in their interest, and they’re coming for it.”

“Iowa should have education. Indiana should run their own education. You’re going to see education go way up,” Trump said during the cabinet meeting. “Right now, we’re ranked at the very bottom of the list, but we’re at the top of the list in one thing: the cost per pupil.”

Trump is expected to sign an executive order to eliminate ED on Thursday, according to USA Today.

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