Joe Biden Tried to Go After Ron DeSantis on Education, but Naturally It Backfired

Joe Biden’s social media team must have thought they had some really good ammo against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.). After DeSantis floated the idea of doing away with Advanced Placement (AP) classes in Florida schools, along with coming up with other ways for high school students to earn early college credit, the Biden team decided to issue a tweet attempting to attack DeSantis for some sort of assault on education.

Instead, the tweet sounded more like an argument for school choice, a position that most Democrats don’t favor. Here’s what the Biden team (because we don’t dare assume that the president said it himself) tweeted:

We chose to use a screenshot because you never know if or when the administration will come to its senses and delete the tweet. That’s a possibility because the argument of the tweet is backfiring on the White House.

School-choice advocate Corey DeAngelis put it as plainly as possible in his reply to the president:

thank you for the accidental endorsement of school choice.

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) February 17, 2023

The GOP Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee pointed out a similar idea in the tweet.

Sounds like an endorsement of #SchoolChoice? https://t.co/rozXtmM7fy

— HELP Committee GOP (@GOPHELP) February 17, 2023

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-Ark.) retweeted the Biden tweet and called the administration’s position out for what it really is.

President Biden, I’ve done more in 5 weeks than you’ve done in 5 decades to give “every kid, in every zip code…access to every education opportunity possible.” I guess, for some, it’s never been about empowering parents or students, but protecting a broken government system. https://t.co/LqsVI9Cr5E

— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) February 17, 2023

Betsy DeVos, who served as secretary of education under Donald Trump, welcomed the president with open arms into the fold of those who are in favor of giving parents more of a choice in their kids’ education.

Welcome to the #EducationFreedom movement, Mr. President @POTUS @JoeBiden https://t.co/vZqjS6tJLw

— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVos) February 17, 2023

Then DeVos added that those to whom Biden is most beholden wouldn’t think too highly of the tweet:

ps — @rweingarten isn’t going to be very happy about this

— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVos) February 17, 2023

Related: What’s the Latest in the Battle Between DeSantis and Disney?

The suggestion from DeSantis that prompted the presidential tweet came in a news conference on Tuesday. The governor posed the notion that Florida could abandon the AP program because the College Board, which directs the AP program and administers its testing, isn’t an elected body.

DeSantis also pointed out that Florida could look at other options as well.

“He mentioned international education programs such as International Baccalaureate and Cambridge Assessment as alternatives that, like AP, enable students to receive college credit after passing the exam,” reports the Washington Examiner‘s Rachel Schilke. “Dual enrollment classes were also cited by DeSantis, which would allow students to take additional classes from professors at nearby colleges while enrolled in high school.”

DeSantis made clear that he isn’t opposed to high school students gaining college credit before graduating, but he did question why Florida couldn’t use an organization other than the College Board for its college credit offerings.

“Does it have to be done by the College Board?” he asked. “Or can we utilize some of these other providers who I think have a really, really strong track record?”

“It’s not clear to me that this particular operator is the one that’s going to need to be used in the future,” he added.

Clearly, the Biden team didn’t realize what it was getting into when it fell a**-backwards into an argument in favor of school choice. (I’ll let you make your own “Biden never knows what he’s doing” joke here.)

If anyone in charge of the @POTUS Twitter account thought about it, he or she would’ve tried to attack DeSantis in a different way. Then again, we all know how tough it is to make an attack against DeSantis stick.