BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — In an interview on Thursday, Sen. Tommy Tuberville gave his thoughts on the country, politics and education while on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast “TRIGGERED.”
“All our institutions are compromised,” Tuberville said. “The progressives are just turning us inside out.”
Tuberville later went on to express his thoughts on teachers within inner cities.
“Most of them in the inner city, I don’t know how they got degrees,” he said. “I don’t know whether they can read and write.”
Tuberville said that the recent pandemic “really brought it out about how bad our schools are and how bad our teachers are,” referring to inner city schools.
Furthermore, Tuberville said that schools are not teaching reading and math.
“I ran (for senator) because I saw, for fifteen years, where our education was going,” Tuberville said. “I saw the transcripts and what these kids were taking, and I’d say, ‘What is this?’”
“If you can’t read, and if you can’t write, you can’t live in a country like this and not have somebody help you through life,” Tuberville said. “And that’s a lot of what this government wants.”
During his time as a coach, Tuberville said he would often spend his own money to tutor incoming college students whose reading levels were insufficient for passing college-level courses.
Tuberville additionally expressed his concern over the country’s mental health crisis and its effects on students.
“It used to be, you know, you’d get bullied maybe at school, but now they get bullied online,” Tuberville said. “It’s a tough situation.”
Tuberville’s recent comments on education follow a series of controversial comments in the media.
On May 2, Tuberville expressed his exasperation with the search for a new Space Command base – a decision two years in the making.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Tuberville asked Air Force secretary Frank Kendall if he had yet come to a decision on the permanent home for the U.S. Space Command. When Kendall said he had nothing new to report, Tuberville said, “None whatsoever? Are we even thinking about this, or is it just in and out?”
In a later interview on May 8 with Birmingham, Ala., radio station WBHM, Tuberville was asked if white nationalists should be allowed in the military.
“Well, they call them that,” Tuberville said. “I call them Americans.”
In an effort to clarify his comment, Tuberville’s office later said to AL.com that Tuberville was “being skeptical; of the notion that there are white nationalists in the military, not that he believes they should be in the military.
