During his tenure in office, seemingly every decision made by Oklahoma’s Christian nationalist state superintendent of education Ryan Walters was designed to gin up culture war battles that, in turn, would generate press cover for Walters personally.
Naturally, Walters incessant efforts to use his office to promote himself made him deeply unpopular with legislators and voters in Oklahoma, prompting him to suddenly announce his resignation late last month.
While state officials attempt to crawl out from the wreckage Walters left in his wake, Walters himself has moved on to head an organization called the Teacher Freedom Alliance.
On Tuesday, Walters appeared in new capacity on the "Washington Watch" program, where he explained to host Tony Perkins that his new mission is to "destroy" the "Marxist teachers unions" that he believes are ruining public education in America.
"We're putting together thousands of teachers from across the country—we're in every state in the country—and we're going to continue to provide them all the support they need," Walters said. "If they get sued by their district, by their union—and you've heard it a time and time again: if a teacher comes in with a cross necklace, they get sued; if they come in and there's a Bible verse somewhere, they get sued. We're going to have their back."
"We're not going to allow these left-wing activists to drive every good teacher out of the classroom," Walters declared. "We're building this community to go in and say, 'Hey, we're some of the best teachers in the country. We're here to get education back.' We're going to give them the supports that they need so that then they can go into the classrooms [and] teach our kids."
"We can't give up on this war," he continued. "If they control the classroom, they win the future. And that's what the Marxist teachers unions have done such an effective job of: they control it, they have dominated our classrooms, they've indoctrinated our kids and we're not going to stand for it another minute. We are going to destroy the teachers union."
Walters has previously called teachers unions “terrorist organizations.” At a state board of education meeting, he played a five-minute video savaging teachers unions that was so hostile—it included insinuations that teachers supported pedophilia—that educators feared it would incite physical attacks on public schools.
