In what appears to be an effort to address the key concerns of his conservative base, the former president has made a lofty promise about a radical education reform that could be coming down the pipe if he is elected president for the second time.
In his speech that took place on Saturday at the Liacouras Center on Temple University, former President Donald Trump made a commitment to move the Department of Education "to the states," as The Washington Examiner reported.
The Department of Education, which was established in 1979, would most likely be eliminated as a result of this move, which would give each state the authority to establish its own department or agency that is responsible for monitoring public education.
“We’ll be able to cut [spending on] education in half and get much better education in some of the states,” Trump said. “We’ll have the best education anywhere in the world.”
However, he continued, “Some won’t do as well. There are a couple of states like, I would say, Gavin Newsom [and California] will not do well.”
As a support for his plan to do away with an agency that has long been a thorn in the side of families looking to control their children's experience in education, the former president stated that the United States also has an education spending problem.
Trump asserted that the U.S. spends more per student than any other country in the world, yet “we’re at the bottom of every list.” He asked, “What the hell do you have to lose?”
Trump spoke to the crowd, reminding possible Trump voters that he attended the Wharton School in Philadelphia.
He also criticized President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders for permitting the City of Brotherly Love to be "ravaged by bloodshed and crime."
“Few communities have suffered more under the Biden regime than Philadelphia,” Trump said, before referencing two recent murders as part of a wider murder and crime epidemic in the city.
He voted to “stand up to Soros-controlled DAs like Philadelphia’s despicable Marxist prosecutor Larry Krasner,” who he said has “the blood of countless men, women, children on his hands, including thousands of African American citizens” over his “refus[al] to prosecute people.”
In addition, during his over ninety-minute speech, Trump criticized President Biden on issues pertaining to inflation, immigration, and foreign policy.
He stated that the adversaries of the United States of America "laugh at us" since he left office and cited a type of criminal activity that he refers to as a "new" crime: "It's called the Biden migrant crime rate."
