Oklahoma’s top education official has gone scorched earth after a video of naked women reportedly played on his office television during an executive session.
Ryan Walters, the Republican state superintendent of public instruction and a diehard Donald Trump supporter, fired back at reports claiming footage of nude women played on the screen in his office during the State Board of Education meeting on Thursday.
“Any suggestion that a device of mine was used to stream inappropriate content on the television set is categorically false,” Walters—who ordered all public schools in his state to teach the Bible last year and who has labeled modern education “absurd“—posted on X Sunday.
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“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.”
Two board members, Ryan Deatherage and Becky Carson, told The Oklahoman they were stunned to see nude women on Walters’ TV screen during the session.
“I was like, ‘Those are naked women,’” Carson told the outlet. “And then I was like, ‘No, wait a minute. Those aren’t naked, surely those aren’t naked women. Something is playing a trick on my eye. Maybe they just have on tan body suits. … This is just really bizarre.’"
“I saw them just walking across the screen, and I’m like, ‘no,’” Carson added. “I’m sorry I even have to use this language, but I’m like, ‘Those are her nipples.’ And then I’m like, ‘That’s pubic hair.’ What in the world am I watching?”
A probe is underway after the incident.
Walters, who chairs the board, turned off the TV after he was alerted to the issue but did not apologize or explain, the two board members said. The meeting continued.
In his Sunday statement, the Trump-loving schools official claimed he was facing a politically motivated attack.
“These falsehoods are the desperate tactics of a broken establishment afraid of real change,” he wrote. “They aren’t just attacking me, they’re attacking the values of the Oklahomans who elected me to challenge the status quo.”
Walters had earlier released a statement to KOKH Fox 25: “Some of these board members are blatantly dishonest and cannot hide their political agenda. It is disappointing that they are more interested in creating distractions than getting work done for Oklahoma families.”
His communications director, Quinton Hitchcock labeled the story “junk tabloid lie,” to NonDoc Media. The Daily Beast has contacted Walters for comment.
Walters has repeatedly stoked controversy with his overtly partisan and religious influence. In November, he unsuccessfully attempted to require schools to show students a video that included him praying for Trump.
He’s been vocal in efforts to ban books in schools that he deems pornographic, such as “The Kite Runner” and “The Glass Castle;” two bestsellers that include references to child sexual abuse. He also targeted dozens of books containing LGBTQ+ themes.
Last summer, he sought to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to put a Bible in every fifth-through-twelfth grade public school classroom in Oklahoma, but he has been temporarily blocked while a lawsuit, filed by civil rights groups and citing potential violation of the separation of church and state, moves through the state’s Supreme Court.
