In July, The Washington Post assembled a grade-school "Kids Chorus" to sing/mock Trump's tweets over bongo drums. That same spirit infuses a story in Sunday's Washington Post Magazine, interviewing third-grade students for their opinions on Trump and issues they think define Trump -- racism, immigration, police brutality, "inequality and privilege," and climate change. And for Hillary Clinton, they asked about gender stereotyping and when we'll get a female president.
To no one's surprise, the Post had just as much trouble locating a conservative or Republican third-grader as they do in pretty much every other news story they produce. The Post writer, Britt Peterson, chose four elementary schools, and "In the three classes where I asked how many students would have voted for Hillary Clinton, all hands went up. (I didn’t ask this question at Bellows Spring, but no one expressed support for Donald Trump there either.)" Two were in D.C., and two were in Maryland. Zero were in Virginia...too purple.
This doesn't cause Peterson or the Post to keep trying for a little balance, for some viewpoint diversity. No thanks, we like it one-sided! Kids say the darnedest things, isn't it cute? They started with hating or fearing President Trump:
Mason Felice, Bellows Spring: I’m scared now that Donald Trump’s president, because ever since he was president a lot of bad things have been happening.
Devonte Holland, DC Scholars: I think that Hillary should’ve won because people are saying that Trump cheated in the election because they said he was working with Russia or ISIS or something.
Ranaia Robinson, Robert R. Gray: Hillary was supposed to win. I mean, she didn’t hate Mexicans. Donald Trump did. She was acting like a grown-up. But Donald Trump just, I can’t even say about him. He’s mean!
Makalynn Dunn, DC Scholars: I would vote for Hillary Clinton because Donald Trump doesn’t like black people and Hillary Clinton does.
Nick Salehizadeh, Georgetown Day: I think that if I could vote, I would vote for Hillary Clinton because I wouldn’t want to vote for Donald Trump because he’s orange.
As for Hillary, one girl said "It made me a little bit mad that it was another boy to be the president because there hasn’t been a female president before." Then came the third-grade lecture on racism:
Ruby Fox, Georgetown Day: So yesterday I went to essentially a black neighborhood where there’s a lot of black families and people, and when I went into the neighborhood there were a lot of poor conditions, like the houses were all run-down and so were the cars, the shops weren’t that well made and everything was falling apart. And I asked my mother why does this happen, and she said because there are still racists and they’re still judging people by the color of their skin, and personally I thought that was gone when MLK died, but it’s still happening.
In fact, racism is so terrible in America, two kids said they would end slavery if they were president:
Jeremiah Richardson, Robert R. Gray: I would end slavery.
Marquale Ingram, DC Scholars: I would make slavery against the law, and, what I would do, I would let blacks and whites get along.
Did the Post reporter take a moment to play PolitiFact and explain how fake their news was? No one corrected it in the Post. One also felt we should give the poor subsidies for food, imagine that:
Taniyah Cristwell, DC Scholars: I think the government should give the poor people money so they can buy food.
And one child was so uninformed, she thought people could choose their schools. We used to have segregation, but "Today, black people and white people can go wherever they want to, like school systems and stuff."
Of course, on climate change, we were treated to the third-grade version of Al Gore, that if we don't do something the oceans will cover all the land:
Dominic Bloch-Prime, Georgetown Day: About the Paris climate agreement, I think that it was so bad that they took us out of it, because you want to protect your great-grandchildren and other generations. ... Because when you limit carbon emissions, the oceans will rise and it will cover land and then eventually all the land will just sink down if we don’t do something.
The third-grader even concluded with smack talk to coal states, just like the adults, Barack and Hillary: "Coal -- that age is over, okay?"
