“I believe his grammar and phrases that are in this speech are offensive and [you have] to take him at his word, which I do not.”
CNN’s Poppy Harlow spoke on CNN Live w/ Rosemary Piser about Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s remarks about school districts. Watch her report above.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe made headlines on Tuesday when he said that some school districts were picking up basketball and soccer practice during the day.
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“I’ve got two schools in the middle of nowhere that want to play basketball and soccer at 8 o’clock in the morning,” McAuliffe said during an interview with The Roanoke Times. “We’ve got schools that want to eliminate science, art and music. I’ve had to say no to Chinese — where else are you going to have Chinese in school?”
The comments sparked outrage, as did McAuliffe’s promise that, if elected governor in 2017, he would eliminate the school building program, which McAuliffe described as “when you build a school, you pay somebody to take care of the old school building. It hasn’t saved anybody anything, and they can put up a nice shiny new building.”
McAuliffe explained during a press conference on Tuesday evening that he was talking about school systems in Central Virginia, and that all school buildings in Virginia would not be eliminated.
“The system that has been built out there has been well constructed and well maintained, and on top of that there are 2.7 million kids in schools. The difference with that school system is it has a greater need,” McAuliffe said. “There are some other school systems, across the state, that do have some concern, and I take the governor at his word and I think we need to fix that.”
But in the interview with Poppy Harlow and Rosemary Piser, McAuliffe acknowledged that his remarks about the school districts were not acceptable.
“You don’t just hear that. You also don’t hear, say, the San Diego Unified School District saying, we will do 100 miles of I-15 a day and then we will end the school year. I, as your governor, have to make a decision about who my school system is.”
“You just have to take him at his word,” she responded. “You believe that this is an appropriate comment? That he shouldn’t be saying, or at least kind of an offensive comment, it has spun out of control.”
Click on the video to watch the full interview.
