A conservative watchdog group is attacking President Biden in a million-dollar ad blitz, accusing him of choosing teacher unions’ interests over students on the issue of school reopenings.
The $1 million ad campaign by Americans for Public Trust will run nationally and in Washington, D.C., over three weeks on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to the group.
“We know schools are safe,” said a narrator in the 30-second ad. “But Biden and his [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] secretly worked with the teachers’ unions to keep schools closed.”
The narrator continued, “Sacrificing kids, keeping them out of school to pay back liberal dark-money groups. Teachers’ unions gave him a record amount of money. Science? No, with Biden it’s always about dark money.”
The ad flashes a news article on-screen involving the American Federation of Teachers lobbying the CDC.
That teachers’ union did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Times, but its president Randi Weingarten defended her union’s action in an editorial last week.
She said her union was simply reaching out to the Biden administration for “science-based guidance” as it had with the previous Trump administration.
Presidential spokeswoman Jen Psaki also has defended the administration’s actions as the routine solicitation of “input” from “stakeholders.”
The acrimonious politics of school reopenings has made Mr. Biden‘s pandemic response a target of conservatives and parents urging school reopenings.
Americans for Public Trust outside counsel Adam Laxalt, former Nevada attorney general and a Republican, has labeled Mr. Biden “the dark money president” for doing the work of the American Federation of Teachers.
“Biden is putting the interests of dark money special interests over those of parents, students, and teachers,” Mr. Laxalt said in a statement “The dark money groups pull the strings, and the American people are suffering the consequences.”
