
This week the media ran hit pieces detailing the exorbitant costs of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ extensive security detail. But missing from every single report run by the media was the reason for the outrageous costs: Threats from left-wing activists.
“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ security detail is projected to cost $7.87 million from now through the end of September 2020,” Politico reported on Tuesday afternoon. “The Marshals Service said the final cost of protecting DeVos in fiscal 2019, which ended Monday, was $6.24 million.”
The following day, The Hill took these numbers and multiplied them for effect.
“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s federal security detail is reportedly expected to cost U.S. taxpayers more than $26 million by the end of President Trump’s first term,” the outlet reported.
In response, members of the so-called “Resistance” pounced, including Common Core-supporting former Obama administration Education Secretary Arne Duncan:
That money could sure buy a lot of books for kids… https://t.co/zjCj4S45UP
— Arne Duncan (@arneduncan) October 2, 2019
Imagine what that money could do if was used to #FundOurFuture… https://t.co/amXEBZMu3Z
— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) October 2, 2019
The personal security detail for Betsy DeVos will cost the American taxpayer $26 million over Trump’s 1st term in office: https://t.co/g8gCMtptTS
If I think of the neuroscience research that could be done for $6.5 million per year, it kinda boggles the mind.
— Bryan William Jones (@BWJones) October 2, 2019
American taxpayers have spent MILLIONS of dollars providing security for a BILLIONAIRE. Disgusting ? https://t.co/IM1q4vDDsr
— StudentDebtCrisis (@DebtCrisisOrg) October 3, 2019
“Fiscal prudence”#mepolitics
Betsy DeVos’ security detail could cost $26 million over four years – CNNPolitics https://t.co/NFQjSjSa8v
— Tiffany Bond (I) ??? (@TiffanyBond) October 2, 2019
“The Marshals Service said the final cost of protecting DeVos in fiscal 2019, which ended Monday, was $6.24 million. That’s down from $6.79 million in fiscal 2018 ….”
How many teachers’ salaries would this cover? How many school lunches would it provide?https://t.co/07cepuQey1
— Stephen Schwartz (@AtomicAnalyst) October 2, 2019
First off, WHY DOES SHE NEED A SECURITY DETAIL???
Second, WHY DOES SHE NEED A SECURITY DETAIL???
Third – Why are WE PAYING FOR IT? https://t.co/M9zhzC6Ooc— Nick Varga (@Karaoke_God) October 3, 2019
Since Politico, The Hill, and CNN all failed to answer the latter Twitter user’s questions, here’s the answer: DeVos needs a security deal because of threats from far-left activists.
In fairness to CNN, it did at least include a statement from the Education Department that somewhat hinted at the issue, though the network could have been clearer in its own reporting.
“Year after year, the press reports on the cost of the Secretary’s security detail,” department spokeswoman Angela Morabito said. “What goes unreported are the threats to the Secretary’s safety, which necessitate the security detail in the first place.”
Not included in CNN’s report was the nature of these threats. They started as early as the secretary’s first month in office in February of 2017.
“In February, DeVos, a supporter of charter schools, was accosted by a group of progressive protesters who barred her entry to Jefferson Middle School Academy in D.C.,” Breitbart noted around the time.
“The protesters carried signs reading ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and ‘Feminists Are the Majority.’ At least one screamed, ‘Shame!’ at DeVos when the newly emplaced Ed Sec arrived at the school. The protesters prevented DeVos from entering the school’s front doors and she had to be let in through a back entrance, surrounded by security.”
Two months later, an unnamed U.S. official confirmed to media that DeVos had by then already “received far more death threats than any past Ed Secs,” as reported by Breitbart.
But there’s more. In a column this week, Tiana Lowe of the Washington Examiner noted that ever since DeVos’s nomination, she’s been smeared by the media as “an evil Scrooge McDuck who hates public education, black Americans, trans folks, gay children, poor people, and women.”
“No, she doesn’t simply just advance policies with which her detractors disagree. Instead, she’s ‘ dangerous’ to every aforementioned group, motivated not by policy concerns but outright malice and an insatiable desire to deprive minorities of their rights and dignity,” Lowe wrote.
“Overheated rhetoric without specific calls to violence aren’t to blame for individual attempts on DeVos’ life, but her unhinged haters are responsible for inculcating the kind of culture that allows such escalating war of the words. If you want DeVos not to need such extreme security measures, maybe dial back the criticism to something more serious about her role and initiatives and a policymaker, not as a person ruining America.”
Or said more simply:
If left-wing thugs weren’t such a threat, Sec. DeVos wouldn’t need so much security.
— Jack Furnari (@JackBPR) October 3, 2019
But why do far-leftists hate DeVos so much? It appears they do because they’ve been brainwashed into believing lies about her, including the lie that she supports rapists.
“Betsy DeVos is trying to sweep rape back under the rug,” reads a bombastically titled op-ed published in The Washington Post last year.
Both this piece and the countless others like it that appeared throughout the liberal media were based on the secretary’s decision to roll back the arguably unconstitutional, Obama-created kangaroo courts that were being used to destroy the lives of male college students accused of sexual abuse.
Including the lives of INNOCENT male college students accused of sexual.
A few prime examples why Betsy DeVos has a point about that pesky due process https://t.co/ME7ZT6HnCi pic.twitter.com/2NN1etVviq
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) September 12, 2017
And for that — for standing up for due process and constitutional rights — DeVos was smeared by the media as a “rape apologist.” And yet the media now wonder in befuddlement why, oh why, she needs so much protection. If nothing else, it seems clear nobody in the media owns a mirror.
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