Milwaukee teacher placed on leave after calling Rush Limbaugh’s cancer diagnosis ‘awesome’

A Milwaukee Public Schools teacher was placed on leave Wednesday after tweeting that longtime conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh “absolutely should have to suffer from cancer.” 

Travis Sarandos, an English teacher at Milwaukee High School of the Arts, responded to a tweet from another social media user who hoped that Limbaugh would recover and begin advocating for health care reforms, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Sarandos tweeted “limbaugh absolutely should have to suffer from cancer. it’s awesome that he’s dying, and hopefully it is as quick as it is painful” in response, according to the outlet.

Milwaukee Public Schools confirmed to The Hill that Sarandos has been placed on leave pending an investigation and that the educator was not speaking for the district or students and staff. 

Limbaugh announced earlier this week during his nationally syndicated radio show that he has been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. 

President Trump broke with State of the Union tradition on Tuesday to recognize Limbaugh, who was a guest at the annual speech, and allow first lady Melania Trump to award him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“Here tonight is a special man, someone beloved by millions of Americans, who just received a stage 4 advanced cancer diagnosis. This is not good news, but what is good news is that he is the greatest fighter and winner that you will ever meet,” Trump said.

The move was controversial among Democratic critics. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) blasted it on Tuesday and said Trump was “putting someone on the same level as Rosa Parks, you know, for example in terms of their contributions to American progress.”

“The idea that he is at the State of the Union [and] receives a medal that is of the highest honor that can be given to a civilian, I find quite frankly, driven more by trying to maintain your right-wing political credentials than it is anything else,” former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential contender, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper at a town hall event in New Hampshire on Wednesday.

“If you read some of the things Rush has said about people, their backgrounds, their ethnicity, how he speaks to them, I don’t think he understands the American code of decency and honor,” Biden continued. “But look, this is Donald Trump.”

Updated Friday at 7:20 a.m.