Bill Maher offered a surprising point of agreement with President Trump by backing his plan to abolish the embattled Department of Education.
“It’s not like the kids are getting smarter,” Maher bluntly told guests Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) and Puck political journalist Tara Palmieri on Friday’s “Real Time.”
“I mean, the numbers keep getting worse and worse and worse. And I don’t know if the Department of Education … I don’t know what it does, except take money. It’s sort of a middleman,” he continued.
The late-night host cited recent findings that revealed that a third of eighth graders in the United States did not have “basic” reading skills. The comedian also referred to alarming union rules in Bay City, Mich., that forbid schools to fire teachers who are drunk on the job until a fifth offense.
During his 2024 presidential campaign Trump, 78, vowed to shutter the Department of Education and is reportedly considering scrapping the entire agency via an executive order.
At a September rally in Wisconsin, Trump told the crowd he was “dying” to get back into office to “eliminate the federal Department of Education.”
Donalds — a conservative Republican who was once on President Trump’s veep short-list — appeared very pleased with Maher’s position.
“I think that the Department of Education has to essentially be closed. A lot of the authorities got to get sent back to the states. The dollars we appropriate actually need to go directly into the hands of parents so that they can use those resources in their states and in their communities to find the best outcome for their children,” Donalds said.
“When the Department of Ed was created in 1977, our reading scores and math scores for kids fourth and eighth grade were higher than they are today. So it’s not worked,” he added.
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