Are you in any way surprised by the reveal this past week that the duly elected Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction since 2023, Ryan Walters, has been exposed as a raging hypocrite. This guy is the rather famous MAGA Christian Nationalist religious fanatic who has vigorously campaigned to impose his beliefs upon all students.
Here is a notable and rather infamous highlight (mined from his Wikipedia page) …
- In June 2024, Walters issued a memo announcing that all public schools in Oklahoma would be required to teach the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, directing “that every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom.“[90][91]
- Walters said that teachers who failed to comply with the mandate could lose their jobs.[93][94]
- In his budget request for fiscal year 2026, Walters asked the Oklahoma Legislature to appropriate $3 million to purchase Bibles for Oklahoma schools.[95] — (Side note: Yes $3 million to buy a book that is rather famously free to access online)
As for his stance on many other things, it is all very predictable stuff – deeply homophobic, very pro Trump, oh and one more rather important thing – he is also deeply corrupt.
Really?
Yes really.
A Previous notable hit from this religious huckster within his previous role as Oklahoma Secretary of Education includes this key observation …
- When in that role, it was an utterly farcical shit-show of incompetence, financial mismanagement, and fraud. Scandal after scandal has now been revealed.
The news from this past week is the revelation that he was watching porn … on a work device … in school board meeting.
Let’s get into the details.
The Porn Reveal
On Fri July 25th NonDoc, a local and highly reputable journalistic source for Oklahoma, revealed the details. This is the alpha source for all the other stories and tweets about this …
Basically what happened is that during an Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting that had taken place the previous day on July 25th this happened …
Two members of the Oklahoma State Board of Education were “shocked and mad” when they saw a video featuring “naked women” on the television screen in Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters’ office during the executive session portion of Thursday’s meeting.
The reason they became aware of it is simply because they could see from where they were sitting what he was looking at …
While neither Becky Carson nor Ryan Deatherage could tell what video was displaying nude women on Walters’ office TV, each told NonDoc they were the only people seated in a position to see the screen. Deatherage said he noticed the video first while a parent was speaking about her appeal of a district transfer denial. As Deatherage weighed his options about how to bring the video to the room’s attention, Carson noticed the nudity.
As in … WTF! … this was not just an internal board members meeting, parents were there and while one parent was speaking, good “Christian” Ryan Walters was spending the time viewing porn …
“I was like, ‘What am I seeing?’ I kind of was in shock, honestly. I started to question whether I was actually seeing what I was seeing,” Carson said. “I was like, ‘Is that woman naked?’ And then I was like, ‘No, she’s got a body suit on.’ And it happened very quickly, I was like, ‘That is not a body suit.’ And I hate to even use these terms, but I said, ‘Those are her nipples.’ And then I was looking closer, and I got a full-body view, and I was like, ‘That is pubic hair.’ Even right now, I couldn’t even tell you what I was watching.”
As Carson processed what she was seeing, she said “the mama bear and teacher in me came out” and she “stopped the meeting cold” by confronting Walters.
“I was so disturbed by it, that I was like — very loudly and boastfully, like I was a parent or a teacher — I said, ‘What is on your TV? What am I watching?’ He was like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ He stood up and saw it. He made acknowledgment that he saw it,” Carson recalled. “And I said, ‘Turn it off. Now.’ And he was like, ‘What is this? What is this?’ So he acknowledged it was inappropriate just by those words. And he was like, ‘I can’t get it to turn off. I can’t figure out how to turn it off.’ And I said, ‘Get it turned off.’ So he finally got it turned off, and that was the end of it. He didn’t address it. He didn’t apologize. Nothing was said.”
Reactions from Walters
His initial response is described as akin to that of a teenager being caught …
“I don’t know if he turned it off or switched the channel, I don’t remember,” Deatherage said. “I was surprised that when he came back to the table, he was not apologetic. I didn’t ever hear an apology for that being on, and he didn’t seem to be fazed that it was on.”
Carson said Walters “blew it off” and acted as if he had “just been caught” in an embarrassing situation.
“Like a teenager when you walk in the room and they’re doing something they’re not supposed to be doing,” Carson said.
Obviously NonDoc reached out to his office for comment when they were writing up the story. The response was a classic Trump-style denial, to be specific this …
Asked about the situation, Walters’ latest director of communications, Quinton Hitchcock, responded with a pointed statement Friday afternoon.
“What an absolute joke of a story and this is embarrassing from you to write a junk tabloid lie,” Hitchcock wrote in an email. “Any number of people have access to these offices, you have a hostile board who will say and do anything except tell the truth, and now, ‘NonsenseDoc’ is reporting on an alleged random TV cable image. Rock solid truth in journalism.”
Asked whether his reference to “a junk tabloid lie” means that he is claiming the video incident did not happen, Hitchcock responded: “Go get a job at The Lost Ogle and let us know when you are going to write a real story.”
NonDoc have two independent witnesses, so this is not just “he says … she says”.
Like you, I also have come to expect the fanatically religious to be raging hypocrites. It’s an old story that persists because it keeps repeating itself again and again.
A few days later, once the dust has settled, he issues a formal denial …
Briefly: He is denying everything, blaming everyone else, and is demanding that they resign? (Does that approach remind you of anybody?)
His story is changing. His first argument was that he wasn’t responsible and couldn’t see what was on the screen behind him. Now, apparently, it never happened.
I do also think that either he must be deeply addicted to porn if he is watching it during a board meeting or he is terminally bored with his job. It’s Oklahoma, so either one is a possibility.
Oh, and for completeness, there was also this …
The one truly shocking thing is that it wasn’t gay porn.
Reminder
One of the “big” campaigns via Ryan Walters has been his vigorous push against “sexual material” and also his striving to ban books from school libraries that he deems to be “pornography”.
For example in March 2023 he recorded this in his car about a new rule about classroom materials …
“We have seen too many instances of our children being exposed to this radical, sexual material that’s being pushed on us by the teacher’s unions and by the Biden administration. One instance of this is way too much,”
The State Board of Education are now completely on board with his policy and wish to see appropriate action taken against this rogue board member …
Deatherage and Carson each said Thursday’s bizarre scenario demands some sort of action toward Walters.
“Besides the shock value and the disturbance of it all and how it affected me as a woman, I think it’s the double standard,” Carson said. “The accountability we are putting on teachers — and we should, I’m not saying we shouldn’t hold teachers accountable — but we’re looking at teachers sometimes with lesser offenses.”
Deatherage said he believes that any other educator who accidentally displayed a nude video at their workplace would face a complaint, investigation and possibly ramifications.
“I believe that Superintendent Walters should be held accountable just like we would any other school teacher, which means at this point — based on other things we’ve looked at in executive session — we would probably pull his (teaching) certificate and put him on his own list,” Deatherage said. “We should treat it the same.”
Meanwhile, the Oklahoma House has been looking for an excuse to get rid of Walters for some time now, and so this may indeed be a golden opportunity.
For example, in August 2024, more than 20 Republican state representatives—led by Rep. Mark McBride—signed a letter requesting the creation of a House investigative committee to examine whether Walters’ actions constitute “willful neglect of duty” or incompetence, which are potential grounds for impeachment. (see here). It was well justified, the letter highlighted concerns about mismanagement of school funding, failing to respond to public records requests, and blocking legislators from board meetings, among other issues.
I should also add that it is not just Republicans, house Democrats have also called for his investigation or removal since 2023, citing ongoing concerns over Walters’ conduct and policy decisions.
So what happens now?
House Common Education Committee Chairman Dick Lowe (R-Amber) who has personally talked to both witnesses, is quoted as saying …
“Shocked would be maybe an understatement a little bit. In the position that that person is in, that’s absolutely without a question not appropriate by any means for any state official, much less that state official,” Lowe said. “I guess you’re never prepared for situations like this, because it’s not in my mindset that that kind of stuff would be going on. But evidently that’s where we’re at, and that’s what we’ll have to deal with.”
Lowe said he has relayed the situation to House Speaker Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow).
“We’re going to find out what the law says we do,” Lowe said. “We’re not going to try to make law or devise plans or anything like that. We’re going to find out what are the appropriate steps. I’ve talked to the speaker. We’re going to do the right thing.”
What can I say except perhaps “Amen” to the thought of at the very least of pulling his own teaching license and putting him on his own list, but also fingers crossed that his decision to view porn during a board meeting was in fact a career decision.
Tweets
Of course twitter tweeted about it, this story is twitter fodder. Here are a few samples …
Why is it always the guys you most suspect?
Always a Republican.
One further side note. Republicans changed the law in Oklahoma to make viewing porn hard to do, you need to first present a photo id, or setup and then activate a VPN, so I’m not buying any of his BS excuses.
I can only speculate that we will we be getting “It was all Obama’s fault” in …3…2…1…