|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
On Monday, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, appeared on Fox Business’s “The Evening Edit” to discuss President-elect Trump’s nominations for FBI Director and Secretary of Education.
When asked about Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI Director who has sworn to actively prosecute Trump’s political enemies, pardon rioters from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, and fire the “top ranks of the FBI,” Tuberville was quick to praise the nomination.
“[Trump’s pick for Attorney General] Pam Bondi is good friends with Kash Patel—they will work very well together,” Tuberville said.
“The American people are scared to death of the FBI. They’ve been weaponized. They’ve been going after people—not just President Trump, but all of his, a lot of his people—his friends, matter of fact—and pushing people to the limit,” Tuberville added. “They have done things by going into homes at six in the morning, waking people up. It’s absolutely amazing what they’ve done and and they’re dead wrong about it, and Christopher Wray will be gone… we’ll have a new FBI director.”
Fox’s Liz MacDonald didn’t ask Tuberville what he thought of Patel’s own promises to prosecute leakers, journalists, and Trump’s political rivals or his intention to replace national security workers with “people who won’t undermine the president’s agenda.”
Tuberville also expressed strong support for Trump’s Secretary of Education pick, Linda McMahon, who has been Trump’s transition co-chair, a major Republican donor, and a former pro-wrestling executive.
“She’s well qualified. As you well know, I spent 35 years in the education business. Our education is in trouble, like everything else. We’re 27th in the world in education,” Tuberville said. “She’s big on homeschool. She’s big on school choice. We need to do something with, obviously, with Title IX—men in women’s sports. We’ve got to get back to educating and teaching math, English, all the things that kids need to do. […] I’m very impressed with her, I think she’ll do a great job.”
Interestingly, abolishing the Department of Education is a key point of the Project 2025 manifesto associated with Trump’s presidential campaign, and Tuberville himself has called for the agency’s abolition. Eliminating the Department of Education would result in education becoming increasingly privatized, which would limit access to quality education for many Americans.
Privatizing education has long been a goal of the GOP, particularly in Alabama. Gov. Ivey and Republicans in the state legislature have actively pushed for private school voucher programs like the CHOOSE Act to shift funding away from public schools to private institutions. These programs largely benefit families whose children already attend private schools, subsidizing their education to the detriment of the vast majority of students in public schools. For Alabama, a state with a troubling history of segregated education, these policies also effectively exacerbate inequalities between black students and their white counterparts.
