In recent years, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters has cultivated a reputation as a right-wing Christian nationalist — even some Republicans have expressed discomfort with his radicalism — prompting discussion among legislators in the state about possible impeachment proceedings.
But now the radical activist is facing a different kind of problem. NBC News reported:
A sheriff’s office in Oklahoma is investigating an incident during a state Board of Education meeting last week that reportedly involved images of naked women on the state school superintendent’s office television. The images were seen during the board’s executive session, held in Superintendent Ryan Walters’ office, The Oklahoman newspaper of Oklahoma City reported, citing members Ryan Deatherage and Becky Carson, who attended the meeting.
Neither MSNBC nor NBC News has independently confirmed the members’ complaints. It’s worth noting that both Deatherage and Carson were nominated by the state’s conservative Republican governor, Kevin Stitt.
Indeed, Walters isn’t exactly benefiting from an outpouring of support from his fellow GOP officials. Two leading Republicans in the Legislature, including Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, issued a statement late last week on a separate investigation into the matter.
“This is a bizarre and troubling situation that raises serious questions about the events and what took place during yesterday’s executive session at the Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting,” Paxton said. Board members’ accounts, he added, “paint a strange, unsettling scene that demands clarity and transparency.”
State House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, who’s also a Republican, called the allegations “serious” and said that “an expeditious third-party review is warranted.”
For his part, Walters has denied any wrongdoing and complained about “politically motivated attacks” and “desperate lies.” He added in a statement published to social media, “Any suggestion that a device of mine was used to stream inappropriate content on the television set is categorically false. I have no knowledge of what was on the TV screen during the alleged incident, and there is absolutely no truth to any implication of wrongdoing.”
And if Walters were a widely respected public servant, who’d demonstrated a deep commitment to improving the public education system, and who’d cultivated a deep well of credibility and support, he might be able to draw on that backing now and ask for the benefit of the doubt.
But that’s plainly not the case. On the contrary, Walters is effectively a far-right internet troll who managed to become the most powerful education official in a state with 4 million people. His “greatest hits” collection is not short. A state requirement that Oklahoma educators keep Christian Bibles in every classroom and incorporate his preferred holy text into public school curricula? That was Walters. Threatening the teaching licenses of school teachers who resisted his demands for Bible lessons? That was Walters, too. Walters has called an Oklahoma teachers’ union a “terrorist organization.” He’s partnered with a far-right propaganda outlet, bringing its materials into classrooms. He pushed a social studies curriculum guidance that directed educators to push pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. At one point last fall, as my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones noted, Walters even wanted to require schools to show children a video of him praying for Donald Trump — though the state attorney general’s office said that couldn’t happen. It’s against this backdrop that the radical official is suddenly facing a new and unusual kind of mess. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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