Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum’s patience ran out during a Wednesday segment when American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten interrupted her — and called her “sweetheart” — before she was forced to backpedal and eventually apologize.
MacCallum brought Weingarten in as a guest on “The Story,” where she asked about issues raised by a current case before the United States Supreme Court — Mahmoud v. Taylor — that involves a group of parents demanding an “opt out” for certain LGBTQ-themed lessons in the Montgomery County School District in Maryland. While Weingarten said that she could not comment directly on the case, she said that she was happy to talk about the broader issues at hand.
The Fox News anchor pointed to the dismal test scores recorded across the board at that particular school district, and asked why the schools were more worried about mandating books about pronouns than about ensuring that kids were actually learning to read, write, and understand mathematics.
“Look at this. I mean this — if this isn’t a failure that needs to be so much more important than whether or not you’re reading a book about your pronouns. This is the Maryland rankings,” MacCallum said. “Fourth graders, these same little kids who’ve had these books, you know, fed to them at a very young age, their reading ranked in 2013, they were second in the nation in Maryland. 2024, 20th. Math, 16th in the nation, plummeting down to 39th. So if I were a parent in this district, I would be saying, ‘Please, please leave these books out of the picture teach my child to read and to do math okay, and let’s focus on why we’re there.’”
Weingarten argued that scores were going up in Massachusetts and down in Florida — which she claimed was proof that Florida’s anti-“woke” model was not working and that throwing more money at education was the answer. MacCallum pushed back, saying that Newark, New Jersey — where per capita student funding was among the highest in the nation — suggested otherwise.
WATCH;
After repeating over and over that she’s fighting for respect for women, awful union boss Randi Weingarten then sounds like an old 1970’s Lou Grant calling Martha McCallum “sweetheart”:pic.twitter.com/YgsD5JHDC1
— MARK SIMONE (@MarkSimoneNY) April 22, 2025
But as MacCallum was trying to make her point, Weingarten attempted to shut her down: “Martha, Martha, sweetheart, sweetheart, listen to me —”
“Please don’t call me sweetheart,” MacCallum objected, clearly fed up.
“I’m sorry — my bad,” Weingarten backpedaled, but continued to claim that education problems could be fixed with more money.
MacCallum, referencing the state of Mississippi, pointed out that what was done with that money was also important. “Well, one of the things that they’ve done in Mississippi is to expand choice. They’re also doing something really important in Mississippi, which is to expand teacher training,” she said.
