Records Contradict Elizabeth Warren's Debate Story About Being Fired for Being Pregnant
It was one of the highlights of Tuesday night’s Democratic debate — but it was a low point for Elizabeth Warren’s ability to tell the truth.
While on the attack against former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Warren revived a story she’s been peddling on the campaign circuit since launching her presidential bid in February 2019: that she’d been fired from a teaching job back in 1971 because she was pregnant.
I might take Warren’s concerns seriously if she wasn’t for abortion throughout and entire pregnancy. pic.twitter.com/eDHWrUY4of
— Andrew Wood (@AndrewHWood) February 26, 2020
Warren’s line about “at least I didn’t have a boss who said to me, ‘kill it,’” was a reference to an accusation that Bloomberg in 1995 had essentially ordered an employee who’d become pregnant to have an abortion.
The truth of that accusation is unknown — Bloomberg has disputed it, as he did at Tuesday’s debate.
The truth of the rest of Warren’s story, though, about being fired by a principal almost 50 years ago is pretty well established — and it turns out it’s likely not true at all.
As Breitbart News reported in a Tuesday night “Fact Check” of the debate, Warren’s account of how she left the job in the Riverdale, New Jersey, school district has changed over the years.
While running for president, Warren has presented herself as a victim of sexism — since that’s what Democrat electorates like.
But in an interview she gave in 2007, Warren described leaving her teaching job as a personal choice:
“I was married at 19, and then graduated from college, actually, after I’d married. And my first year of post-graduation, I worked — it was in a public school system, but I worked with the children with disabilities. And I did that for a year,” she said.
“And then that summer, I actually didn’t have the education courses, so I was on an ‘emergency certificate,’ it was called. And I went back to graduate school, and took a couple of courses in education, and said, ‘I don’t think this is going to work out for me.’ And I was pregnant with my first baby, so I had a baby, and stayed home for a couple of years, and I was really casting about, thinking ‘What am I going to do.’”
That’s a far cry from the story Warren told the country in a nationally televised debate on Tuesday.
In addition, as the Washington Free Beacon reported in October, Riverdale Board of Education minutes from the period when Warren was employed showed Warren’s contract for a second year of employment had been approved at a meeting on April 21, 1971.
Minutes from a board of education meeting two months later, on June 16, 1971, showed the board had accepted Warren’s resignation “with regret.”
(The minutes from the year’s meetings are available here. Scroll through the link to find the meetings in question.)
In short, Warren’s previous, recorded statements about her departure from the Riverdale school district contradict what she’s now telling the country.
And official proceedings from the period contradict what she’s now telling the country as well.
It’s not hard to see how that’s a problem, considering this is the same woman who spent a career pretending to be of Native American heritage because it benefited her career, even going so far as to publicly announce the results of a DNA test that proved her claims were greatly — greatly — exaggerated.
She ended up apologizing for that one.
At this point I don’t even believe she is named Elizabeth, probably lying about that too
— Bobby T (@rcthompson01) February 26, 2020
She’s impervious to facts and dna tests.
— mog1717 (@mog1717) February 26, 2020
Did she claim she was fired over being pregnant before or after she claimed to be Native American? ?
— Rich Corbett ?? (@RichC) February 26, 2020
Warren has a problem with the facts. But she throws around plenty of questionable innuendo.
— Gary Beemer (@gsbeemer1) February 26, 2020
That last one nails it.
Warren has no problem smearing a Democratic opponent on national television with a repulsive but still unproven accusation about something that happened in the past. Meanwhile, her own stories about her own past are questionable — at best.
For Democrats like Warren, the “truth” isn’t a matter of objective reality — it’s just words that can be used to satisfy whatever the needs of the moment.
And the media have no problem aiding and abetting it.
For Warren the professional, it was helpful to claim Native American heritage to check a “minority” box.
For Warren the presidential aspirant, it’s helpful to claim being the victim of discrimination almost half a century ago.
By any standard, her performance at Tuesday night’s Democratic primary faceoff was a low point in Warren’s long career of twisting or avoiding the “truth.”
For the sane part of the country, Warren’s distortions have long since caught up with her.
The only question now is whether Democratic voters will sink so low that they keep her company.
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