How Betsy DeVos has mastered the art of the non-answer
You might think that it would be a matter of course for the education secretary to provide direct answers to direct questions about education or education policy. As it turns out, that is often not the case with Betsy DeVos.
The secretary’s non-answers come in different forms.
Sometimes, for example, she offers a response that deliberately doesn’t answer the precise question, as she did on Friday, when she was asked about her views on climate change and whether human activity has affected it.
The issue was raised after President Trump pulled the United States out of the landmark Paris climate agreement on Thursday and DeVos issued a statement the same day applauding it. (Trump, according to Vox, has expressed skepticism about climate change in tweets around 115 times since 2011.)
I asked the Education Department whether DeVos believed the climate is changing and human activity has played a role and received no answer. My Post colleague Emma Brown asked DeVos the same thing to DeVos on Friday, when the education secretary visited a D.C. charter school.
Brown said that after DeVos refused to comment on the extent to which human activity has driven climate change, the education secretary repeated her support for Trump’s decision, saying that he had “made good on a promise to ensure that the American people are not How Betsy DeVos has mastered the art of the non-answer - The Washington Post: