Education Secretary Betsy DeVos allegedly said the students who booed her May 2017 commencement speech at a historically black college didn’t have the “capacity to understand” what she wants to accomplish, according to the tell-all book by former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman.
Manigault Newman describes DeVos’ comments during a conversation with her after the May address at Florida’s Bethune-Cookman University as “meaning, all those black students were too stupid to understand her agenda.”
Manigault Newman trashes DeVos throughout the book and calls her “woefully inadequate and not equipped for her job.” She alleges President Donald Trump referred to the education secretary as “Ditzy DeVos” and promised to “get rid of her” after the Bethune-Cookman event.
In the book, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” Manigault Newman also blames DeVos for confusion around an annual conference in Washington, D.C., for historically black colleges and universities, which the administration downsized in September 2017. She writes that DeVos was the “number one driver for cancellation.”
“This disgraced former White House employee is peddling lies for profit. The book is a joke as are the false claims she’s making about Secretary DeVos,” said Liz Hill, press secretary to DeVos.
