Here’s an interesting parlor exercise: Who do you think is the greatest threat to our planet? Would you nominate Putin, Assad, Kim, Xi Jinping, or someone else?
Well, don’t bother arguing among yourselves because Mike Pompeo, the former US Secretary of State and head of the CIA and now a presidential hopeful, has it all figured out. Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas recently, he said,
I get asked, ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’ The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call.
Like Putin, Assad, Kim, and Xi, Weingarten is also a President. However, she leads the American Federation of Teachers, a labor union with only 1.7 million members. By contrast, China has 1.4 billion people, of whom 625 million are ‘fit for service,’ and Russia has 143 million people, including 47 million who are ‘fit for service.’
But numbers aren’t everything. In fact, Pompeo may be right. Weingarten is dangerous to people like Pompeo because most of the members of her ‘army’ are classroom teachers, most of them women. Consider that list again (Putin, et cetera): all men–not a single woman–and we know that men like Pompeo are scared of women, particularly powerful women.
Weingarten also terrifies Pompeo because she is honest, while he was notorious for using the State Department budget and facilities for entertaining his friends, family, and political supporters. Would anyone be shocked to find State Department silverware and china in Pompeo’s home? I doubt it.
But what makes Weingarten particularly dangerous is that she is gay and female, the worst nightmare for pompous blusterers like Mike Pompeo. That configuration–a strong and honest gay woman who cares deeply about America’s children–is something he and his ilk just cannot handle. Randi Weingarten is the whole package.
Recall the aphorism, “The Whole Is greater than the Sum of its Parts.” Greater–and terrifying–for A-holes like Pompeo.
The Merrow Report 
Dear John – loved your piece!
All the best to you and Joan for a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.
Michael
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Come on John, of course Weingarten and her band of classroom terrorist are way more frightening than an autocrat with nuclear weapons or a Harvard trained lawyer spewing nonsense.
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Over the years I have enjoyed reading your educational missives, but this diatribe against Pompeo is over the top. You come across as an angry stooge of the educational establishment and your personal attacks are way out of bounds. You have lost a great deal of your credibility as well the respect of this reader. jd
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John, there’s a hot link in my piece to an NBC article about Pompeo’s questionable behavior and his “Madison Dinners.’ I urge you to read it in its entirety, but some snippets are below. He apparently also made staffers run personal errands, as did his wife, Susan. You may also be aware of some of his questionable actions as CIA Director and Secretary of State. And that a former Secretary of State would consider a union leader more threatening to world order than Putin, Kim, Assad, et alia is patently ludicrous and cravenly political, imho.
“WASHINGTON — As federal workers file out of the State Department at the end of a Washington workday, an elite group is often just arriving in the marbled, flag-lined lobby: Billionaire CEOs, Supreme Court justices, political heavyweights and ambassadors arrive in evening attire as they’re escorted by private elevator to dinner with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
…..State Department officials involved in the dinners said they had raised concerns internally that the events were essentially using federal resources to cultivate a donor and supporter base for Pompeo’s political ambitions — complete with extensive contact information that gets sent back to Susan Pompeo’s personal email address.
……The Madison Dinners, which aren’t disclosed on Pompeo’s public schedule, add another element to what his critics say is a pattern of pushing the edge of the envelope by using government resources for potential personal or political gain.
Steve Linick, who was abruptly fired Friday evening as the State Department’s inspector general, was investigating whether Pompeo made a political appointee carry out personal errands like walking his dog, NBC News reported.
……Then there was the dinner in May 2019 that occurred after Trump stormed out of an infrastructure meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who accused him of throwing a “temper tantrum.” Among those invited for the next evening’s dinner were Fox News host Laura Ingraham; the E.U. ambassador; Republican power couple Matt and Mercedes Schlapp and Chick-fil-A Chairman Dan Cathy, a major donor to campaigns against same-sex marriage.
“The CEO of Chick-fil-A is not someone I would say is involved in foreign policy,” a person with knowledge of the dinner said.
……Twenty-three percent of invitees have been associated with media or entertainment, and another 30 percent are government types: current or former officials, members of Congress and judges and their spouses. Media figures skew heavily toward conservative TV personalities, with 39 percent of them from Fox News.
Only 14 percent are diplomats or foreign officials.
….there’s no coordination with the desks at the State Department overseeing specific regions of the world. For example, if the South Korean ambassador goes to a Madison Dinner, the State Department’s bureau handling Asia may not even be aware or know to follow up to see what the ambassador and Pompeo may have discussed, officials familiar with the dinners said.
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