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New book claims Biden told Randi Weingarten ‘I am not abandoning you’ eight days into presidency

September 9, 2023 | | Print Article

President Joe Biden’s legacy of America last was ingrained at the onset of his administration as a new book detailed the campaign promise squashed to satisfy a high-profile donor.

“I’m not abandoning you…”

Taking office in the midst of COVID hysteria, Biden had made many a bold claim about how he would govern differently than former President Donald Trump. In particular, he had attempted to slight his predecessor on the forestalled return to in-person learning, something Biden assured he would get back to within his first 100 days.

However, in “The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future” by Franklin Foer, such a target appeared readily curtailed little more than a week in according to a phone conversation between the newly inaugurated president and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

“I am not abandoning you on schools. I want you to know that,” Biden reportedly told Weingarten on Jan. 28, 2021, as written in Foer’s book according to The New York Post.

The author went on to detail how the president had told the teachers’ union boss, “he knew she was taking a lot of heat around the reopening of schools” and that “he was an abiding friend.”

“For the sake of avoiding conflict, especially conflict with an ally,” described Foer, “the Biden administration trimmed its goal of returning kids to school to a fraction of what they promised on the campaign trail.”

As indicated by the Post, on Feb. 9, 2021, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki had said, “His goal that he set is to have the majority of schools — so, more than 50[%] — open by day 100 of his presidency. And that means some teaching in classrooms. So, at least one day a week. Hopefully, it’s more and obviously, it is as much as is safe in each school and local district.”

However, the adjusted bar was notably lower than what the reality on the ground was at the onset of the new administration as the newspaper reported two-thirds of schools already had at least a single day of in-person instruction.

Foer wrote the decision amounted to Biden “conceding  that for thousands of students the rest of the school year would be lost to the pandemic,” in order to “ease the unions into accepting his goals, avoiding that sort of confrontation that might explode in a strike.”

Throughout COVID, Weingarten had readily been caught gaslighting on supposed efforts to reopen schools and this past April she was confronted directly over it during an appearance on CNN.

“Speaking on behalf of millions of American parents,” said CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings, “I have four at home — I had to teach them at home, my wife had to teach them at home. I am stunned at what you have said this week about your claiming to have wanted to reopen schools”

“I think you’ll find that most parents believe you are the tip of the spear of school closures,” he went on. “There are numerous statements you made over the summer of ’20 scaring people to death about the possibility of opening schools. And I hear no remorse whatsoever about the generational damage that’s been done to these kids.”

The president wasn’t alone in backing Weingarten as first lady Jill Biden had welcomed her and National Education Association President Becky Pringle into the White House to begin the administration.

“I said I was going to bring you with me into the White House. And on day one, you’re here,” she had told them during a Jan. 21, 2021 meeting, Foer wrote, “Instead of pressing the union chiefs, she paid tribute to them, reserving her highest praise for Weingarten.”

As it happened, the OpenSecrets revealed that the AFT had donated more than $2.6 million in the 2020 cycle to Democratic Party candidates and the NEA had doled out over $2.4 million. Biden’s campaign alone had taken in over $245,000 from the teachers’ unions.

The book said that Biden “was never going to force teachers to return to school. His plan was to give them time and space to get comfortable with the idea, to smother them in the love of Jill Biden.”

While the teachers got coddled, American students suffered immense learning setbacks, and that reality has not been forgotten.

Kevin Haggerty
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