Trump Vows To ‘Immediately’ Shut The Department of Education: ‘It’s A Big Con Job’
President Donald Trump vowed to “immediately” shutter the US Department of Education during a presser in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon.
Trump slammed the department, accused some employees of fraud, and questioned its efficacy, noting that American students are significantly behind academically compared to their peers overseas.
As Trump praised Elon Musk’s continued work gutting government agencies, he was asked, “How soon do you want the Department of Education to be closed?”
“I’d like it to be closed immediately,” he replied. “Look, the Department of Education’s a big con job.” Trump continued:
So they ranked the top 40 countries in the world. We’re ranked number 40th. But we’re ranked number one in one department: Cost per pupil. So we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world. But we’re ranked number 40. We’ve been between 38th and 40. The last time I looked, it was 38. And then I look two days ago it came out the new list. It came out at number 40. So we’re ranked 40.
Norway, Denmark, Sweden. I hate to say it, China – as big as it is, it’s ranked in the top five – that’s our that’s a primary competitor. We’re ranked number 40. So if we’re ranked number 40, that means something is really wrong, right?
Trump said educating students should be an issue for states to handle and praised majority Republican states such as Iowa while slamming Democratic majority states such as California.
He concluded that bureaucrats in Washington “don’t care” about children and accused many of them of corruption:
So we have a Department of Education where people from Washington, D.C., who many in many cases don’t care about the kids out in the country, They don’t care about the farms and the farmer’s daughter and the father’s – farmer’s sons. We have a massive bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. We have buildings that are all over the city Department of Education.
Department of Education’s on all these buildings. By the way. Nobody shows up to work because they’re all working at home, you know, “working at home.” They’re not working at home. And a lot of them have second jobs. And that’s the other thing that Elon Musk is looking at. How many of these people are getting checks working at home, but they’re not working because they have second jobs and even third jobs? You’re going to find a lot of them and those people are going to be fired because we have to make our government smaller.
Watch above via Fox News.
