{"id":333718,"date":"2017-11-06T01:15:28","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T00:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/us-teachers-union-chief-randi-weingarten-held-secret-meeting-with-steve-bannon\/"},"modified":"2017-11-06T01:15:28","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T00:15:28","slug":"us-teachers-union-chief-randi-weingarten-held-secret-meeting-with-steve-bannon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/us-teachers-union-chief-randi-weingarten-held-secret-meeting-with-steve-bannon\/","title":{"rendered":"US teachers union chief Randi Weingarten held secret meeting with Steve Bannon"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h4>\u201cThis is one smart guy\u201d<\/h4>\n<h2>US teachers union chief Randi Weingarten held secret meeting with Steve Bannon<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Jerry White<br \/>\n    <br \/>4 November 2017<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten held a secret meeting with then White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon at a Washington, DC restaurant just months after Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration, according to an article on the <em>Intercept<\/em> website published earlier this week.<\/p>\n<p>Weingarten had not previously reported her rendezvous with Trump\u2019s neo-fascist aide, which the <em>Intercept<\/em> said occurred in March 2017 and \u201chad been instigated by a mutual friend.\u201d The AFT president later told the <em>Washington Post<\/em> that the meeting was held on April 19 in an empty restaurant near the White House and had been set up by Chris Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media Inc.<\/p>\n<p>Ruddy\u2019s conservative news outlet was an early supporter of Trump but had previously alienated right-wing circles by coming to the defense of the Clinton Foundation. Weingarten, a member of the Democratic National Committee, is a Clinton ally, and the AFT has been a longtime financial backer of the foundation, which functions as a corrupt nexus between US corporate and political interests around the world.<\/p>\n<p>Weingarten told the <em>Intercept<\/em> and the <em>Post<\/em> that she agreed to the meeting to \u201cadvocate for public education\u201d after Trump\u2019s proposed educational budget cuts that could reduce federal educational funding by $9 billion and impose other cuts that would undermine special education and health programs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you are the president of the union and you\u2019re fighting fiercely to get budget restorations and to not have a dismantlement of public education or of higher education and the administration asks to\u2014or it\u2019s made clear to you that they want to&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2017\/11\/04\/wein-n04.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u201cThis is one smart guy\u201d US teachers union chief Randi Weingarten held secret meeting with Steve Bannon By Jerry White 4 November 2017 American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten held a secret meeting with then White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon at a Washington, DC restaurant just months after Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration, according [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-333718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}