President Trump: Handicapped, Minority Children ‘too Disruptive” in Classrooms-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
President Trump tweeted, “I agree with DeVos. Handicapped and minority children are too disruptive in the classroom. Disaster! Perhaps not everyone needs K-12 education.”
The Truth:
President Trump didn’t say that “handicapped and minority children” are too disruptive in the classroom, and we couldn’t find any instances of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos saying that, either.
A screen grab appearing to show the tweet in question surfaced in mid-February 2017, shortly after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was confirmed by the Senate:
It’s not clear where, exactly, the screen grab originated, but a tweet about “handicapped and minority students” never appeared in the president’s timeline.
And Trump didn’t post and then delete the tweet, either. ProPublica archives deleted tweets from politicians in a searchable database, and the tweet about disabled and minority student being too disruptive never appears there.
As for the claim that Betsy DeVos originally said that “handicapped and disabled children” were too disruptive in classrooms, we couldn’t find any evidence to prove it true. DeVos drew scrutiny when DeVos appeared to misunderstand federal protections for disabled children in public schools during Senate confirmation hearings, and said that she thought it was a “matter better left to the states” to decide. However, she didn’t say that “handicapped and minority children” were too disruptive in the classroom, as this rumor implies.
Given all that, we’re calling this one “fiction.”