Trump Targeted In Texas A&M Political Science Course Material

Yahoo

11-06-2025

(Texas Scorecard) – A Texas A&M summer class uses a textbook that promotes the establishment narrative that President Donald Trump is a criminal.
A source provided Texas Scorecard with information regarding the textbook for a Texas A&M political science course offered this summer semester.
The textbook in question is the 11th edition of 'Keeping the Republic: Power and Citizenship in American Politics,' by Christine Barbour and Gerald C. Wright. Wright is an emeritus professor at Indiana University Bloomington. Barbour is his wife and a political science lecturer at the same university.
Barbour and Wright sharply contrasted how they believed the country viewed former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump when presenting them in the first chapter.
'When President Biden was elected in 2020, we thought we had turned a new page in our political history,' Barbour and Wright wrote in the first chapter. 'But so much of the country's attention remained on Donald Trump, who demanded the limelight during his presidency and refused to relinquish it, as well as political power.'
The first chapter contained more anti-Trump messaging. The authors repeated the establishment media narrative that President Donald Trump is a criminal but didn't mention the politicization and manipulation of the prosecution against him.
'Donald Trump is okay with rules that constrain other people's behavior, but he chafes under rules that apply to him. There is a reason why, when he left office in 2021, he faced a barrage of lawsuits and criminal indictments at the state and federal level, and that reason was not that his political enemies wanted to go after him,' Barbour and Wright wrote. 'It's because he broke or ignored multiple laws he didn't want to follow or that he decided didn't apply to him, and some of the consequences caught up with him.'
'Donald Trump doesn't like to be bound by rules, even the ones written in the Constitution,' the authors continued.
This textbook is required reading in American National Government, a political science course at Texas A&M offered during the summer semester from May 26 to July 4 of this year.
The Bush School of Government & Public Service houses Texas A&M College Station's political science department. Named after former President George H. W. Bush, members of the Bush family serve on the school's advisory board, including former Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. Neil Bush, son of George H.W. Bush, is board chair. Neil Bush is also the founder and chairman of the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations.
Use of Barbour and Wright's textbook has not been confined to the College Station campus.
Dr. Shane Gleason used the ninth edition of the textbook in a Spring 2022 political science class at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. Meanwhile, former Texas A&M Galveston professor John Carhart praised an earlier version of the book. Several of Carhart's student reviews on RateMyProfessor claim he had a very liberal bias in the classroom.
Other universities have used earlier versions of this textbook. Previous versions were used at Stephen F. Austin State University in Fall 2014, and at the University of North Texas in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017.
Texas A&M did not respond to a request for comment before publication.