Virginia gubernatorial Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe abruptly ended an interview with WJLA 7 News D.C. reporter Nick Minock after he was pressed on education and medically coercive vaccine mandates.
Minock said he offered both McAuliffe and Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin a 20-minute interview last week to discuss some of the top issues concerning Virginia voters as gubernatorial election day draws nearer. Youngkin agreed to Minock’s terms, but McAuliffe’s team said he would be limited to 10 minutes of conversation.
During the interview, Minock asked McAuliffe, who first served as Virginia governor from 2014-2018, about his plans for addressing education, crime, and vaccine mandates. Toward the end of the already-constrained interview, McAuliffe’s staff reportedly abruptly cut the candidate off from speaking “over time,” and the candidate complained that Minock did not ask good questions.
“All right, we are over. That’s it. That’s it. Hey, I gave you extra time. C’mon, man. You should have asked better questions early on. You should have asked questions your viewers care about,” McAuliffe said.
“Well, we did,” Minock replied.
Minock’s first question to McAuliffe was about his jarring comments during the gubernatorial debate where the candidate said he doesn’t “think parents should be telling schools what to teach.”
“Are you saying parents should not have a voice in their kids’ education?” Minock asked.
McAuliffe began his answer by claiming that “parents do have a voice” and even said he “got into this race because of education,” but instead of addressing concerns about how and what students are learning, he pledged to raise teacher pay above the national average and funnel money into broadband that enables remote schooling.
“I built the best education system in the country when I was governor before,” McAuliffe bragged minutes before brushing off Minock’s questions about the Biden administration’s targeting of parents as domestic terrorists and the Loudoun County Public Schools’ sexual assault coverup.
“I think it’s a complete misuse of power. And overreach,” Youngkin said when asked about the Biden administration’s strong-arming parents into silence. “And oh, by the way, what parents are doing is standing up for their children. There’s no room for violence anywhere. There’s no room for threats. But there is room for parents to stand up and express their frustration and dissatisfaction with what school boards are doing. And we have to make sure parents have a voice.”
McAuliffe also falsely claimed that Youngkin wants to cut 43,000 teachers, which the Republican said is “patently false” during his own interview with Minock.
“Well, he’s made all that up. But that’s what Terry McAuliffe does is if he doesn’t like the real fact set he makes one up,” Youngkin said. “It’s all patently false. What we are going to do is invest more in education than has ever been invested in education in Virginia with the largest budget in the history of Virginia. We are going to make sure our schools are open five days a week in classroom education because our children deserve that. The second thing we are going to do is raise standards again.”
Youngkin touted his plans to enable parents to choose where their kids receive an education and also pledged to “work on our curriculum to make sure our children are being taught how to think as opposed to what to think.”
“This is a comprehensive approach to fundamentally lifting up our education system. My opponent wants to do the same thing he’s always done, which is make up facts, and then he’s going to run the same playbook he tried to run when he was governor,” Youngkin said. “It didn’t work then; it’s not going to work going forward. And this is why parents are so excited about what I’m talking about where we are going to empower parents, and of course, Terry McAuliffe thinks that parents don’t have a role in their children’s education.”
During his portion of the interview, McAuliffe also repeated the lie that “critical race theory is not taught in Virginia” and has never been taught in the state and claimed that Youngkin was using the issue as a “racist dog whistle.”
“All he’s trying to do is divide parents and use children as political pawns,” McAuliffe said before promising that he will use his authority if elected to force COVID vaccinations on teachers and masks on everyone.
Youngkin said he found this to be “laughable” coming from a guy who “called for Gov. [Ralph] Northam’s resignation when he wore blackface because he was so offended by it … and then he turns around and embraces Gov. Northam, and he’s got somebody else on the ticket with him who admits to having worn blackface.”
“And he is going to lecture me on something around race?” Youngkin asked. “This is about making sure that race is not used to divide people in my view. Critical race theory in fact forces the division of people based on race. And it’s the exact opposite of what we should be doing.”
In addition to slamming his opponent over education, McAuliffe also criticized Youngkin for his unwillingness to enact strict gun control in the state and quickly admitted that he strongly supports government and private medical coercion in the form of vaccine mandates and even shot requirements for kids “if the CDC says these are safe.”
“Glenn Youngkin is an anti-vaxxer. He goes on TV or right-wing radio and says, ‘You don’t want to get vaccinated, don’t do it — there’s many good reasons not to get vaccinated.’ No there’s not,” McAuliffe said.
“It’s just not true,” Youngkin retorted in his interview. “And again, he doesn’t even begin to even flirt with the truth. He’s more comfortable making things up along the way. So let’s just be clear. I’ve been a strong advocate for people to get the vaccine. … I don’t believe we should mandate the vaccine. My opponent wants employers to fire employees for not getting the vaccine.”
In a “Fox & Friends First” panel on Tuesday, four Virginia Democrat voters explained how their party’s COVID-19 lockdowns, treatment of parents concerned about their kids’ learning, and the state’s education system have turned them away from McAuliffe to Youngkin.
