Every single thing they do or say is corrupt and dishonest:
President Donald Trump turned a Philadelphia fourth grader into a poster child for the school-choice movement Tuesday when he told the nation that thousands of students were “trapped in failing government schools” and announced that the girl was at last getting a scholarship to attend the school of her choice.
But Janiyah Davis already attends one of the city’s most sought-after charter schools, The Inquirer has learned. In September, months before she was an honored guest at Trump’s State of the Union address, she entered Math, Science and Technology Community Charter School III.
MaST III opened in the fall in a gleaming facility on the site of the former Crown Cork & Seal headquarters in Northeast Philadelphia, part of a charter network so popular that the school received 6,500 applications for 100 seats next year. Like all charters, it’s independently run but funded by taxpayers — meaning that Janiyah and the other 900 students at the school do not pay tuition.
How she landed in the audience during Trump’s prime-time speech Tuesday remains a bit of a mystery even to Janiyah’s mother, Stephanie Davis.
It appears that when the White House went looking for a black student to use as their token at the State of the Union people from the former private Christian school Janiyah attended gave them her name. The White House didn’t look any further and Janiyah’s mom didn’t know what was going on and she went along with it.
“For too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools,” Trump said. “To rescue these students,” he said, 18 states had created scholarship programs — ”so popular that tens of thousands of students remain on a waiting list.”
“One of those students is Janiyah Davis, a fourth grader from Philadelphia,” Trump said. “Janiyah’s mom, Stephanie, is a single parent. She would do anything to give her daughter a better future.”
That was a lie, obviously. She was already attending a top-flight Charter School of her choice.
When Trump said their names, Davis said she was “really surprised” and “honored.” She was also surprised that Janiyah was chosen to receive a scholarship.“I don’t view MaST as a school you want to get out of at all. I view it as a great opportunity,” Davis said.
It’s impossible to believe they couldn’t have found a student who really needed that scholarship. They just don’t care. I’m sure Trump asked for their pictures and decided they came out of central casting and that was the only thing that mattered.
It never fails to stun me, even now, just how thoroughly dishonest and also inept they are. They are literally incapable of doing anything right.