Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ security detail clocked in at $6.24 million for this past fiscal year, with next year’s cost slated at $7.87 million. Unlike past secretaries of the department, DeVos’ detail includes both an internal security force and personnel from the U.S. Marshals Service, per the request of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Naturally, the revelation has the #Resistance very mad online.
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
Seeing as our $22 trillion national debt has catapulted us to our highest debt-to-GDP ratio since World War II, it’s true that every dollar spent without a positive return on investment is a dollar directing us closer toward an imminent fiscal crisis. In a sane world, DeVos shouldn’t require anything more than the mere body-men that protected prior secretaries. But thanks to the ire and fearmongering of the same #Resistance members livid at DeVos’ detail, her life literally defends on a multimillion-dollar fleet.
Just like racist rednecks in such livid disbelief that a black man became president that they fabricated an entire conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, the people angry that extra funds must be spent on the security of the target of their ire are mostly the same ones responsible for the costs in the first place. Over a year before the 2008 election, Obama required Secret Service protection thanks to persistent and pervasive threats from his detractors, ultimately rendering him, similar to DeVos, in need of extra spending on security throughout his presidency. The Right spent eight years melting down at the costs of Obama’s golf and vacation trips — costs largely stemming from security detail — and yet, it was the rage and racism of a small but vocal minority of Obama’s opposition that rendered such costs necessary in the first place.
The case of DeVos is no different. Sure, she wasn’t born in Kenya, but she’s also 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.
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.
