United States Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos attends the “Bringing America’s Children Back to School Safely” event at the State Room of the White House in Washington, DC on August 12, 2020.
NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP via Getty Images
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos resigned Thursday night, accusing President Donald Trump of rhetoric fueling the “unscrupulous” invasion of the US Capitol by a crowd of his supporters.
DeVos is the second member of Trump’s cabinet to retire due to the riot on Wednesday that flooded Congressional halls and postpone confirmation of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
Earlier Thursday, transportation secretary Elaine Chao said she would resign. A number of other Trump administration officials have also quit since Wednesday over the riot.
In a letter to Trump stating she would be leaving office on Friday, DeVos mentioned what she believed were the successes she and Trump had in education policy.
“We should showcase and celebrate the many accomplishments of your administration on behalf of the American people,” DeVos wrote.
“Instead, we need to clean up the mess created by violent protesters flooding the Capitol in an attempt to undermine people’s business,” she wrote.
“That behavior was unscrupulous for our country,” DeVos wrote. “There’s no question about the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it’s a turning point for me.”
On Wednesday, Trump had addressed a crowd of supporters outside the White House. During remarks lasting more than an hour, the president repeated false claims about winning the election and repeated allegations, unsupported by evidence, that Biden was declared the winner due to voting fraud.
Trump also said, “We will have to fight much harder,” urging supporters to march to the Capitol, where Congress began the vote-counting process.
The crowd soon turned into a crowd that swarmed wildly through the halls of Congress, frightening lawmakers and staffers who took refuge wherever they could. Four people died in the chaos.
DeVos noted that “impressionable children look at all this and learn from us.”
“I believe we all have a moral obligation to do good [judgment] and model the behaviors we hope would mimic, ”DeVos wrote.
“They need to know that America is bigger than yesterday.”
She said she resigned “in support of the oath I have taken on our constitution, our people and our freedoms.”
In her own announcement of resignation, Chao had said, “Yesterday our country experienced a traumatic and completely avoidable event when supporters of the President stormed the Capitol after a meeting he addressed.”
“As I am sure is the case with many of you, it has tormented me deeply in a way that I just cannot put aside,” Chao said.
Chao is the wife of Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Who refused to back Trump’s efforts to have Congress block Biden’s confirmation as the Electoral College winner of the presidential election.
Other officials who resigned as a result of the riot included Tyler Goodspeed, Acting Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger, and Trump’s Special Envoy to Northern Ireland Mick Mulvaney, who was once his Chief of Staff .