Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), kept children out of school during the COVID pandemic. Weingarten admitted that she knew remote learning wasn’t a substitute for in-school learning. However, she is now rewriting history and blaming Donald Trump for keeping schools closed.
Randi Weingarten is now blaming President Trump for schools not reopening from COVID fast enough.
But in 2020, she called Trump’s reopening plan “reckless,” “callous,” and “cruel.”
Sorry, @rweingarten. You don’t get to shut down classrooms AND rewrite history. pic.twitter.com/lIZ5IAzbNB
— Erika Donalds (@ErikaDonalds) December 8, 2025
Since 2023, Gaslighting Randi falsely claimed it wasn’t her fault and claims she wanted schools reopened.
She also insisted that certain ‘safety’ protocols had to be met before students could return to in-person learning. The protocols were expensive, unrealistic, and agenda-driven, and she never stopped moving the goalposts. She erected constant roadblocks during those times.
Remember how she was responsible for the authoritarian guidelines the CDC published. She shaped the impossible guidelines for reopening schools with the CDC in 2021.
She called attempts to reopen schools “reckless, callous, and cruel.”
The woman made it impossible to get rid of masks with “off-ramps” that didn’t exist.
Her union pushed aggressively at the local levels to keep schools closed. As a result, children weren’t developing empathy. From masking, to distancing, to acceptable community spread metrics, and extreme quarantines, to exorbitant money requests for left-wing programs, and demanding peer-reviewed studies that didn’t exist, she made it impossible to open schools. While she doesn’t make the rules, Biden agencies let her make the rules.
Areas with high union influence remained closed much longer than others and certainly more than necessary and she pushed for it.
Her union continued to demand remote schooling in 2022, knowing it would damage the children.
Teachers unions literally blocked reopening. Trump gave the green light. Bottom line: it was up to each state. The 10th amendment cedes health policies to the states.
She’s a flat out liar. Trump had nothing to do with reopening schedules. Schools should never have been closed.
Weingarten is evil. Her ability to lie without batting a lash is testament to her sociopathic nature.
How does a childless lesbian become the president of the American Teachers Federation, when she has never raised a child? Does she belong to some special group?