Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares slammed CNN host Jim Acosta on Wednesday night for suggesting that the commonwealth is now a “soviet-style police state” under Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin.
“I seem to remember Glenn Youngkin campaigning in a fleece vest in Virginia,” Acosta said on Tuesday night. “He was running as a different kind of Republican. I was told there was going to be a vest, not a Soviet-style police state across the Potomac from Washington.”
The Daily Wire reported:
Acosta accused Youngkin of “pitting citizen against citizen” immediately after playing a clip of the governor promising to remove “inherently divisive teaching practices out of the schools.” Acosta seemed outraged by removing the racially polarizing CRT curriculum from taxpayer-funded schools — the chief campaign promise made by Youngkin and Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears — which Acosta said violates “the traditional conservative tenets of liberty, anti-censorship and freedom.”
Acosta also slammed Youngkin for setting up a process for parents to complain if public school teachers violate the law by teaching racially divisive concepts, such as claiming all members of one race inherently oppress all members of other races. Acosta likened the measure to the Texas Heartbeat law, a pro-life protection that allows citizens to sue abortionists who perform an abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually around the sixth week of pregnancy. “How concerned should we be, about these laws that seem to be catching on of, citizens ratting each other out?” he asked Jong-Fast, adding they encourage “canceling your neighbor across the street or next door.”
Miyares responded to Acosta’s remarks during a Fox News interview with host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night, saying, “I think what Jim Acosta said — listen, my family fled Communist Cuba.”
“You want to talk about what ‘Soviet-style’ looks like? It’s the opposite of freedom,” he said.
“So clearly, Jim Acosta maybe needs to take some history classes of what Soviet-style communism actually looks like. And [Virginia is] the opposite.”
“What we have said is parents matter. Listen, if you’re a parent and you want to mask your child for six, seven, eight hours a day, you absolutely have that right. That’s your individual decision,” he continued. “The great irony of all this, is in Soviet-style communist states like Cuba, the state diminishes parents. They say, ‘Your loyalty is to the state,’ and parents have less control. This is about parental empowerment.”
Fox News reported that Miyares’ uncle had been arrested at night by communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s secret police and that their home was “nationalized: in the name of fairness and equity.”
Related:
- Virginia Superintendent Says Students Who Don’t Wear Masks Will Be Suspended, In Violation Of Governor’s Opt-Out Order
- Youngkin Champions ‘Liberty’, ‘Opportunity’ In Rousing Inaugural Speech, Promises ‘New And Better Day’ For Virginia
- Governor Youngkin Signs 11 Orders On Day One In Office; Includes CRT Ban, Investigating Loudoun County Officials