Former Trump Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, took a shot at Ron DeSantis while targeting LGBTQ people, saying the Florida GOP governor’s “Don’t Say Gay” law doesn’t go far enough.
In a rambling, fast-talking speech the first Republican to challenge Trump told voters at an Exeter, New Hampshire town hall Thursday that schools should not be saying anything about sex or gender until at least seventh grade. The Florida law bans discussion of “inappropriate” conversations, especially related to LGBTQ people, technically until after third grade, but in combination with other law DeSantis has signed, teachers and administrators are pulling every book off library and classroom shelves for fear of being sued or arrested.
She also falsely claimed schools are teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT), and falsely described the college-level analytical framework designed to examine systemic racism.
After lamenting the status of American education before COVID, Haley said, “now you’ve got parents who are desperately struggling because our kids have lost so much in education. We don’t know how to make them back up. Think about that. And through all of that, when we should be doing everything we can to get our kids back at top pace, what are we doing?”
“We’re talking about critical race theory where if a five-year old girl goes into kindergarten, if she’s white, you’re telling her she’s bad and if you’re if she’s brown or black, you’re telling her she’s never gonna be good enough and she’s always gonna be a victim.,” Haley said falsely. “That’s abusive.”
Then she dove into the “Don’t Say Gay” law, calling it by that name rather than its official title, the “Parental Rights in Education Act.”
“You look at the fact that here they’re trying to talk about gender in schools. You know, there was all this talk about the Florida bill, the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill. Basically what it said was you shouldn’t be able to talk about gender before third grade,” Haley claimed, which is not an accurate description.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think that goes far enough.”
“When I was in school, you didn’t have sex-ed until seventh grade,” she continued, falsely conjoining to very separate issues. “And even then your parents had to sign whether you could take the class of my dad when Simon thing so I was the uncool kid in the back classroom that couldn’t take sex ed. That’s a decision for parents to make that’s not a decision for schools to make.”
Watch Haley’s remarks below or at this link. Her CRT and “Don’t Say Gay” remarks begin after the 18:00 minute mark.