Former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice said on Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront” that President Donald Trump’s executive order to restore patriotic education to our schools was “the most communist, retro, crazy thing I’ve heard out of Donald Trump’s mouth in a while.”
Burnett said, “He just said something else today, signed an executive order creating the quote ‘1776 commission.’ And the goal of it, and I want to quote, from the order is to ‘restore patriotic education to our schools,’ as if that education has been gone. He went after The New York Times for its quote, ‘1619 project,’ which aims to reframe this nation’s history with a greater focus on slavery. Here’s what the president said.”
In a clip, Trump said, “America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism and built the most fair, equal and prosperous nation in human history.”
Burnett asked, “What is your response to the president?”
Rice said, “This was one of the most astonishing speeches I’ve heard him give. He talks about patriotic education. I thought I was listening to Mao Zedong running communist China. We don’t have the education where the dear leader tells the people what they must learn. We open students’ minds. We give them facts. We teach them how to analyze. We teach them civics and the foundations of the Constitution. When you study the Constitution, which it appears Donald Trump hasn’t, you understand it is a living document that has evolved. He heralded today the signing of the Constitution in 1787 as a great day, it was. I love the Constitution. I’ve sworn an oath to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In 1787, you and I, Erin, and all women in our country couldn’t participate in the democracy. We had no vote. If you were African-American and a male, the constitution of 1787 said you are worth 3/5 of a human being. So, to celebrate that and deny the realities of our history, positive and negative, and to wipe out the history of slavery in this country and to call the teaching of it un-American is the most communist, retro, crazy thing I’ve heard out of Donald Trump’s mouth in a while.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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