Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday became the second Cabinet member to resign over President Donald Trump’s response to the mob breaching the US Capitol on Wednesday, The New York Times reports. In her resignation letter, DeVos blamed Trump for the violence and accused him of turning the U.S. into a “banana republic.”
“We should be highlighting and celebrating your administration’s many accomplishments on behalf of the American people,” she wrote in the letter. “Instead, we are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protesters overrunning the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people’s business.”
“That behavior was unconscionable for our country,” she added. “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.”
“The peaceful transfer of power is what separates American representative democracy from banana republics,” DeVos said in a statement posted to Twitter on Wednesday evening, hours after the storming of the Capitol. “The work of the people must go on.”
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Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao also resigned after the attempted coup on Capitol Hill.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
