Matt Taibbi published an essay on Substack Tuesday called, “The Democrats’ Education Lunacies Will Bring Back Trump.” He pointed, obviously, to the Virginia governor’s race and Terry McAuliffe’s argument that parents shouldn’t be telling schools what to teach.

Taibbi also brought up an appearance by the New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” in which Hannah-Jones reiterated her agreement that experts and not parents should be telling schools what to teach children. We even did a post on her appearance.

Taibbi writes:

On the full Meet the Press Sunday, Todd in an ostensibly unrelated segment interviewed 1619 Project author and New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones about Republican efforts in some states to ban teaching of her work. He detoured to ask about the Virginia governor’s race, which seemingly was decided on the question, “How influential should parents be about curriculum?” Given that Democrats lost Virginia after candidate Terry McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach,” Todd asked her, “How do we do this?”

Hannah-Jones’s first answer was to chide Todd for not remembering that Virginia was lost not because of whatever unimportant thing he’d just said, but because of a “right-wing propaganda campaign that told white parents to fight against their children being indoctrinated.” This was standard pundit fare that for the millionth time showed a national media figure ignoring, say, the objections of Asian immigrant parents to Virginia policies, but whatever: her next response was more notable. “I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught,” Hannah-Jones said. “I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science.”

Taibbi even embedded video of her appearance, but she found out about his piece and accused him of twisting her words.

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She did come back to clarify.

So Hannah-Jones, a writer, meant to say “having a say” but it came out “deciding.”

For what it’s worth, Taibbi says he’s against laws banning the teaching of the 1619 Project, but was joint pointing out as others did Sunday: “Still, it was pretty rich hearing the author of The 1619 Project say she lacked the expertise to teach, given that a) many historians agree with her there, yet b) she’s been advocating for schools to teach her dubious work to students all over the country.”

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Tags: 1619 ProjecteducationMatt TaibbiNikole Hannah-JonesquoteTerry McAuliffe