Just as Americans are getting ready to dig into their Thanksgiving turkeys, the head of the country’s second-largest teachers union, Randi Weingarten, has dug into Mike Pompeo, accusing the former secretary of state of launching an antisemitic attack against her and suggesting that his recent remarks incite anti-LGBTQ violence. Ms. Weingarten’s tirade was published in Britain’s Guardian newspaper. 

The fracas started with an American website’s interview with Mr. Pompeo — who served as state secretary between 2018 and 2021 and as director of the CIA prior to that. He is not an antisemite. He is widely seen as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2024 — that posted on Monday.

Included among his remarks was the assertion that Ms. Weingarten, who heads the 1.5 million-plus-member American Federation of Teachers union, is the “most dangerous person in the world.” Mr. Pompeo was not so much singling out the union chief as making a point: He preceded his remark by asking rhetorically,  “I get asked ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’”

He added to that, “If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teacher’s unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids.” As the Hill reported, “education was one of the issues Americans cited as the most important during the 2022 midterm election cycle, as many GOP-led states implemented laws that prohibited the teaching of critical race theory — a college-level theory that posits racism underlies American institutions and public policies.” 

If America’s former top diplomat is unambiguously not on the side of top-heavy woke ideology filtering into America’s public schools, Ms. Weingarten in her reaction to Mr. Pompeo’s critique seems the very embodiment of identity politics. In her estimation, she told the Guardian, Mr. Pompeo took issue with her because she is “Jewish, gay, teacher and union.” In what appears to be a nod toward the left’s new use of the idea of “stochastic terrorism,” she branded his rhetoric as “extremist” and said it “has a real chance of turning into violence. Look at what just happened in Colorado Springs.”

On the night of November 19-20, an assailant shot and killed five people at an LGBTQ nightclub at Colorado Springs, Colorado. In addition to those killed, 25 were injured, mostly by gunfire. 

Ms. Weingarten has tried vociferously to deflect any responsibility for the substance of Mr. Pompeo’s argument and insists on politicizing it. She said that Mr. Pompeo was “trying to garner money from that [Republican] donor base that gave $50 million for anti-trans ads, during the recent election” and that it was “politically expedient” to call what teachers do “filth.” 

Not surprisingly, some media outlets, from MSNBC’s Chris Hayes to Vanity Fair, have piled on in their defense of Ms. Weingarten — even though Mr. Pompeo obviously was using hyperbole to describe how woke politics in America has gone off the rails. 

While Ms. Weingarten has apparently been keeping busy lashing out against American statesmen in the foreign press, the Sun reached out to Mr. Pompeo for comment via his publicist at Harper Collins Publishers at New York. We did not receive a response ahead of the holiday, but we do look forward to reading his forthcoming book: “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” which will be published in January.