Oklahoma schools rank 49th in the nation, so you might assume the official in charge of running them would have more pressing concerns than issuing a completely bonkers statement regarding Donald Trump’s arraignment in Miami federal court.
“Joe Biden Leading a Banana Republic Coup Against American Justice,” announced the press release from Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters on Monday.
The accompanying statement has nothing to do with education and proved that the dunce elected last year to supervise the schooling of 700,000 kids is either a result or a perpetuator of far right indoctrination—possibly both.
“We are seeing the most profound unwinding of the U.S. Constitution that our country has ever experienced since the Civil War,” Walters’ statement begins. “The impending arrest of former President Donald Trump is Joe Biden wielding power that one would find in a third-world dictator attempting to end his opponent’s political campaign.”
Walters, who is 38, then proceeds from falsehood to conspiracy theory.
“The investigation is a highly coordinated trap by the DOJ, and the entire Democratic establishment promoting these actions.”
Walters ends by saying, “These are illegal actions by Biden as part of a banana republic coup on the entire judicial system and the Constitution.”
The truth is that Trump sought and failed to thwart the 2020 result with a Big Lie that he continues to voice daily—one that his followers still buy into wholeheartedly. He has bolstered his fantasy by installing a facsimile of the Oval Office desk in his Mar-a-Lago home and referring to himself in the third person. His pronoun is the royal, not the all-inclusive pronoun WE.
He has also held onto a stash of classified documents and refused to relinquish them despite numerous pleas and warnings from investigators. He once said that nobody is above the law—but he strenuously sought to make himself an exception.
Trump’s arrest and arraignment in Miami on Tuesday afternoon should have been a teachable moment for school kids in Oklahoma, along with everywhere else. The lesson is that even a former president is subject to the law. That is one of the central principles that made America great in the first place and will continue to do so as long as we honor it.
But in his statement, Walters chose fantasy over education—and you have to ask yourself why. Does he actually believe it?
A recording of him talking about kitty litter boxes in classrooms—a wacky falsehood spread by him and other far-right loonies to rile up their base—sounds like he would believe almost anything about the “the radical left” that he has pledged to vanquish from his state’s schools, along with their “woke ideology.”
Walters defended the far-right group Moms for Liberty when the Southern Poverty Law Center branded it an extremist group in its annual report released last week. And two days before he posted his delusional press release about Trump’s arraignment, he retweeted an announcement by the Moms for Liberty that he would be one of the speakers at the group’s upcoming summit in Philadelphia. Other scheduled speakers include Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who Walters seems to parrot often.
Moms for Liberty bills Walters as one of “the most innovative leaders in education in America.” Some of those who work with him might disagree. A state education official named Matthew Colwell who had, until last month, been in charge of overseeing Oklahoma’s federal education funds told a local news outlet, “We had to convert a 1-pager to 4 to 6 bullet points for Supt. Walters because I needed to translate it like I’m talking to a five-year-old.”
Colwell, whose duties included the complex task of ensuring each of the state’s 541 school districts received its due share, told The Daily Beast that Walters did not seem interested in the particulars of running a huge educational organization.
“At some point you start to expect that somebody in a position of that importance is going to learn something about how to do the job,” Colwell said. “It felt more and more like he’s not really interested in doing the job that he has. I don’t know what job he wants, but it doesn’t seem to be being the leader of the school system in Oklahoma. It just kind of seems like maybe there’s something else out there.”
Whatever that something might be, Walters’ strategy for getting it seems clear.
“Tweeting and talking and spinning,” Colwell said. “Most of his attention [is] on really national political type stuff.”
That would include what Walters calls liberal indoctrination—as well as so-called wokeism. He has also spoken out about supposed porn in schools, an issue that Colwell says is not on the forefront of most teachers’ or students’ minds.
“None of that is like the concerns that people are raising in Oklahoma,” Colwell said. “These are not the actual issues that we hear every single day from teachers and superintendent and principals, what they’re really dealing with. Like the porn in libraries, nobody’s worried about that in schools. They’re worried about trying to get kids to go to the library.”
He added that if principals see porn as a danger, it is the porn that kids can summon instantly on their cellphones.
“And like sharing pictures of each other,” Colwell said. “That’s what principals are worried about. They’re not worried about, you know, some random book. No enterprising 13-year-old is going to search for porn by sneaking into his school library and find the one naughty book that got hidden there 10 years ago.”
In terms of innovation, Walters prepared to offer teachers big signing bonuses with a five-year commitment. Colwell, who says he is fiscally conservative and politically centrist, pointed out that Walters’ plan appeared to violate state law—and maybe also federal regulations.
“I guess the charitable way to say this is [Walters] has a higher tolerance for not complying with the law than I do,” Colwell said.
Colwell was summoned to human resources on May 26.
“They said, ‘I just got a call from your boss’” Colwell said. “[HR] got it directly from Ryan Walters that I was to be terminated, effective immediately.”
Colwell subsequently filed a wrongful termination lawsuit. A Walters spokesperson dismissed it as “Yet another example of a baseless claim.”
“Contrary to being a public servant, this individual is a political activist who has no business being funded by Oklahoma taxpayers,” the spokesman went on. “This administration will not tolerate pre-existing bureaucrats who are not 100% committed to empowering parents, ending leftist indoctrination, and making Oklahoma’s public education the best in the nation.”
The response sounded like a melding of Trump and DeSantis.
Walters’ spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry from The Daily Beast about the Trump press release and how that fits with the duties of a state superintendent—or whether his bananas banana-republic version of the event is what he would like to see taught in the state’s schools.
