After Trump Casts Blame for a Special Olympics Cut, Betsy DeVos Flashes Pique

By Erica L. Green and Maggie Haberman
March 29, 2019

WASHINGTON — After a two-day thrashing over her department’s proposal to eliminate funding for the Special Olympics, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sat before senators on Thursday ready to defend it again.

“As I said then, and I’ll say again, we had to make tough choices and decisions around the budget priorities,” Ms. DeVos told Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat. She even went on to tell him in a fiery exchange to “not use disabled children in a twisted way for your political narrative.”

But when President Trump triumphantly declared Thursday evening that he had “overridden my people” and saved the Special Olympics, Ms. DeVos seemed to have taken enough blame.

“I am pleased and grateful the president and I see eye-to-eye on this issue, and that he has decided to fund our Special Olympics grant,” Ms. DeVos said. “This is funding I have fought for behind-the-scenes over the last several years.”

It was an unusual move for Ms. DeVos, who has gone to great lengths to publicly support the president even when she and her staff have disagreed with the administration’s policy positions. And it has kicked off fresh speculation that Ms. DeVos might be the next member of the cabinet to fall to the commander in chief’s capricious whims.

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