Christopher Rufo Threatens Teachers Union President With ‘Legal War’ Over Doctored Quote
Conservative activist and writer Christopher Rufo threatened to wage a “legal war” against American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten over a doctored quote she attributed to him on universal school choice.
In a weekend tweet, Weingarten quoted Rufo with an apparently invented quote based on comments he made in a speech at Hillsdale College.
“Rufo himself said ‘To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust. To sow & grow that distrust, you have to create your own narrative frame,& have to be brutal & ruthless in pursuing it,’” she tweeted.
Her comment came in response to a thread from AFT highlighting quotes from Weingarten defending public schools and blasting conservative movements like the push from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to ban classroom discussions on sexual orientation and gender for grades kindergarten through third grade.
“It’s getting reckless and heinous, and they think it will make people hide or stop teaching – to stop teaching kids to think critically and stop teaching kids to love their neighbors and build community. I have talked to our LGBTQ+ members to be their backstop,” Weingarten added.
Rufo, who often covers stories involving liberal teachings in public schools and private companies, too issue with the quote and threatened “legal war” on Monday.
“This is a doctored quotation. Delete it, @rweingarten, or I will wage legal war against you—and, as you have made up the middle part of the quote entirely, I will win,” he tweeted.
This is a doctored quotation. Delete it, @rweingarten, or I will wage legal war against you—and, as you have made up the middle part of the quote entirely, I will win. https://t.co/SuR0wqjxUj
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 25, 2022
He followed up with a link to the Hillsdale College speech from earlier this month. In the lecture dubbed “Laying Siege to the Institutions,” Rufo took aim at public schools and teachers unions, but the quote Weingarten tweeted is not included.
When discussing “universal school choice,” Rufo does say the first part of Weingarten’s tweet, but then expands upon his point and does not hit the second part of her quote.
To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust because in order for people to take significant action, they have to feel like they have something at stake. I think that the public schools have done a remarkable job at doing that, specifically the public school teachers unions. They shut down schools for more than a year. In some districts, half of all kids never showed up to online learning. They’ve had the most catastrophic learning loss, likely since WWII. They kept kids masked for years while the adults traveled around the world with no mask on and the teachers union endorsed promoting Critical Race Theory in all 14,000 local school districts.
The second part of Weingarten’s quote appears to reference comments Rufo made approximately seven minutes before the “universal school choice” discussion, and doesn’t come out the way Weingarten says it did.
Rufo addressed conservative outrage with companies like Disney over their opposition to Florida’s controversial parental rights law and tells the audience to be “aggressive” in pushing back.
What we’re seeing, I think as the first step, is a narrative and symbolic war against companies like Disney, for one example. You have to be very aggressive. You have to fight on terms that you define. You have to create your own frame, your own language and you have to be ruthless and brutal in pursuit of something good.
Weingarten’s tweet presented the two ideas as one thought from Rufo, and apparently fabricated the latter part of the quote.
Rufo went on to accuse Weingarten of fabricating the quote in order to make his views appear more “sinister.” The portion of his talk that Weingarten highlighted is specifically focused on teachers unions losing the trust of parents and the importance of creating “alternatives” to the public school system.
I welcome criticism, even harsh criticism, from @rweingarten and the teachers unions. But fabricating a quotation is utterly dishonest and beyond the pale of acceptable discourse. Weingarten and the AFT should delete it immediately—or I will escalate.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 25, 2022
“Randi combines two unrelated lines and fabricates the words ‘to sow & grow that distrust’ to make it seem sinister. In the speech I say the opposite: the *teachers unions* have created distrust,” Rufo tweeted.
He then said if the tweet is not deleted, he will “escalate” matters.
UPDATE: In a followup tweet on Monday, Weingarten posted the “exact quote” from Rufo, which separated the the original quotes she linked together and dropped a number of words from the first tweet. In the statement, she also claimed Rufo is the one who “doesn’t care about truth.”
Exact quote: “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.” He said people need to “create your own narrative and frame.”
He doesn’t care about truth, he cares about attacking public ed. https://t.co/xcywJh1N7M https://t.co/paEvAVWaCo— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) April 25, 2022
