During his speech at the Democratic National Convention, President Biden attempted to gaslight the American people about his administration’s position on school closures during the pandemic.
“Kamala and I helped states and cities get back their schools back open,” he yelled. But as X account Libs of TikTok reminded, Democrats attacked former President Donald Trump for arguing schools need to be reopened, especially because COVID-19 posed very little risk to children.
“During the pandemic Kamala and I helped states and cities get back their schools back open” - Joe Biden
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 20, 2024
Now look at this DNC ad from 2020 attacking Trump for wanting to reopen schools:
Democrats ran on school closures. They’re trying to rewrite history again. They’re… pic.twitter.com/viWxUfpiKW
In July of 2020, candidate Biden criticized Trump’s call to completely open every school in the country or risk funding cuts arguing instead that school districts should decide for themselves when and how to best reopen based on local conditions.
“If you have the ability to have people wear masks and you have teachers able to be in a position where they can teach at a social distance — that, I think is one thing,” he said at the time. “But it costs a lot of money to do that. If you don’t have that capacity, I think it’s too dangerous to open the schools. So it depends.”
In a piece titled, "Democrats Try to Whitewash Their Starring Role in School Closures," Reason explains what really motivated Biden's actions.
President-elect Biden vowed in December 2020, if conditionally, that a majority of K-12 public schools would be open within his first 100 days of office. On his first day in office, he quietly downgraded that promise to just K-8 schools. By week three, "open" was reinterpreted to mean "at least one day per week."
There was a practical reason for such expectation-lowering. The administration and its teachers-union allies still wanted one last huge federal payout, in the form of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which (after being passed one month later) directed $122 billion to K-12 schools (on top of the $70 billion in emergency federal school funding those schools had already received), as well as an additional $350 billion to state and local governments, which typically spend about 20 percent of their budgets on pre-collegiate education.
"We need a Marshall Plan for our schools," urged the school superintendents of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago in a December 2020 Washington Post op-ed. (Only NYC of the three was even half-heartedly open.) The hostage-taking was not subtle; neither was the White House's timing.
President-elect Biden vowed in December 2020, if conditionally, that a majority of K-12 public schools would be open within his first 100 days of office. On his first day in office, he quietly downgraded that promise to just K-8 schools. By week three, "open" was reinterpreted to mean "at least one day per week."
There was a practical reason for such expectation-lowering. The administration and its teachers-union allies still wanted one last huge federal payout, in the form of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which (after being passed one month later) directed $122 billion to K-12 schools (on top of the $70 billion in emergency federal school funding those schools had already received), as well as an additional $350 billion to state and local governments, which typically spend about 20 percent of their budgets on pre-collegiate education.
"We need a Marshall Plan for our schools," urged the school superintendents of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago in a December 2020 Washington Post op-ed. (Only NYC of the three was even half-heartedly open.) The hostage-taking was not subtle; neither was the White House's timing. (Reason)
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The Trump campaign called the claim the "second biggest lie" in the president's remarks.
Biden: "During the pandemic, Kamala and I helped states and cities get their schools back open."
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 20, 2024
The second biggest lie he's told of the night behind the "fine people on both sides" hoax. pic.twitter.com/t6cTtMqPdr
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