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| - FACT CHECK: Did Fox News Host Greg Gutfeld Refer To Teachers As ‘The KKK With Summers Off’?
An article shared on Facebook by Media Matters for America claims Fox News host Greg Gutfeld referred to teachers as “the KKK with the summers off.”
Verdict: Misleading
A review of Gufeld’s comments reveals they were in reference specifically to the teachers union the National Education Association (NEA), not teachers in general as the article’s headline suggests.
Fact Check:
The Media Matters article in question focuses on a clip from a July 7 edition of the Fox News show “The Five” in which Gutfeld and his co-hosts discussed a recent NEA proposal to replace the term “mother, father and maternity leave” with more gender-neutral terms. The article’s headline claims that during the course of the conversation, Gutfeld, who hosts his own show on Fox News, referred to teachers as “the KKK with summers off.”
The headline is misleading. An examination of the entire quote reveals Gutfeld was speaking specifically about the NEA when he made the comparison to the KKK. In particular, he was arguing that the NEA’s opposition to school choice made the organization racist.
“Anybody at this point who opposes school choice is protecting a destructive system that harms minorities who don’t have other options and that makes them truly racist oppressors,” said Gutfeld. “The NEA is the KKK with summers off. It’s true. They’re racist.”
Here’s the clip of Greg Gutfeld calling the National Education Association — the largest teachers union in the country — “the KKK with summers off” because of its opposition to “school choice.”
“It’s true. They’re racist,” he adds. pic.twitter.com/G7F5G7zboc
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 8, 2022
At no point does Gutfeld claim or suggest that all teachers, or teachers in general, are the “KKK with summers off” as the Media Matters headline suggests. (RELATED: Did Fox News Publish This Article About ‘They/Them Summer’?)
Other news outlets reported the comments were in reference to the teachers union, not teachers in general. “Fox News Host Calls the Largest U.S. Teachers Union the ‘KKK With Summers Off,'” reads a headline from The Daily Beast. The progressive news magazine AlterNet published an article about the comments titled, “‘They’re projecting’: Fox News sparks outrage after calling teachers union the ‘KKK with summers off.'”
The NEA is the largest teachers union in the U.S. with nearly 3 million members but not all teachers are members of the union. Some 30 percent of public school teachers are not members of any union, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Check Your Fact has reached out to Media Matters For America for comment and will update this piece if a response is received.
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