Lesbian union boss claps back at JD Vance’s “gross” comments about her not being a real mom

The lesbian president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, has called Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) “nonsensical” and “insulting” over his recently resurfaced 2021 comments calling her childless and saying that she wants to “brainwash and destroy the minds of children.” Weingarten is a stepmother to her wife’s two children.

In his 2021 comments, Vance said that parents should decide what values and lessons their children learn, adding, “So many of the leaders of the left — and I hate to be so personal about this — but they’re people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children. And that really disorients me, and it really disturbed me. Randi Weingarten, who’s the head of the most powerful teachers’ union in the country — she doesn’t have a single child. If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone.”

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Speaking to former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on MSNBC’s Deadline White House, Weingarten responded to Vance. “If it wasn’t so insulting, and if we didn’t have such a divided country, where people take seriously what he or [former President] Donald Trump say, it would be ridiculous.”

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“Whether it’s Catholicism, or Judaism, or any of the religions or not that many of us believe in, teaching children is one of the most important things we can do, regardless of whether we are parents or not,” she said, before mentioning her two stepchildren.

“I consider them my kids now. And it’s wonderful to have a big family with lots of nieces and nephews,” she continued, adding, “Somebody doesn’t have to be a parent to be a great teacher.”

“In fact, so many teachers in America, so many nuns in parochial schools are fantastic teachers who teach compassion and caring and critical thinking and context,” she noted. “It’s nonsensical, but what it does in this age of disinformation and misinformation, it just makes the job of teaching and learning—the connection between parents and teachers and kids—it makes it harder. And that’s why it’s gross.”

Vance’s comments echo similar comments he made in the past about how people without children shouldn’t be allowed in positions of power in the government and even that people who don’t have children shouldn’t get an equal number of votes as people who do have children. He has previously attacked out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Vice President Kamala Harris as “childless cat ladies,” even though Harris is a step-mom and Buttigieg was going through the adoption process at the time.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) attacked Weingarten similarly in 2023, claiming that Weingarten was “not a biological mother and really not a teacher either,” even though Weingarten taught for years before becoming head of the teacher’s union. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) made similar comments on Fox News in 2021, calling Weingarten “a joke” and adding, “Randi Weingarten does not even have children of her own. What in the hell does she know about raising and teaching kids?”

However, this isn’t the first time Weingarten has responded to right-wing critics.

In May 2021, Weingarten appeared on Fox News and criticized the media network’s support of election conspiracy theories and disinformation pushed by Trump. At the time, Fox News host Martha MacCallum accused Weingarten of pushing anti-racist “critical race theory” in schools because she supports the teaching of The 1619 Project, a history curriculum that focuses on the United States’s use of slavery. MacCallum said it was “wrong… as a historian, to want to teach” that in classrooms.

“If you’re really talking about misinformation now, Martha, and I hope you are, I really would hope that Fox would really look at what happened in this election and how we can – because every social studies teacher is wrestling with this – discern fact from fiction,” Weingarten said. “We have to do that as social studies teachers.”

MacCallum cut her off and said that it’s “quite clear” that Joe Biden is president and added, “[I’m] not sure why you are so concerned about that.” MacCallum’s anger and defensiveness at Weingarten’s comment may have stemmed from the fact that Fox News was getting sued at the time for pushing the conspiracy theories of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Weingarten responded, “I would hope that Fox would be just as focused on, ‘Let’s get rid of the misinformation about what happened in this election.’ This election was freely–’”

MacCallum tried to cut her off, rolling her eyes and saying, “Oh come on, Randi, this is not the topic that we’re here to talk about. That’s a dodge! Okay?”

In the same interview, Weingarten called out Fox for spreading disinformation on the COVID-19 epidemic.

“I would hope that Fox would [say] what everybody else in public health is doing, which is, ‘We have to get our kids vaccinated once the vaccination is ok.’ I would hope Fox says to all of these people that don’t want the vaccines, that think there’s a problem, ‘Why don’t you and I do things together to get our kids back to school?’ This is what we need to do,” Weingarten said, adding, “We have to stop the misinformation, we have to stop the disinformation, we have to stop the chaos.”

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