Fact Check

Did Betsy DeVos Tweet 'It's Is My Favorite Country' About America?

In response to a hashtag asking Twitter users to describe the United States in three words, a parody account for the Secretary of Education described it in five.

Published July 2, 2018

Claim:
Betsy DeVos miscounted the number of words in a poorly-worded "#AmericaIn3Words" tweet.

On 29 June 2018, a parody Twitter account devoted to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos responded to a Twitter hashtag asking social media users to come up with three-word descriptions of the United States of America:

That this Twitter account is not really Devos's should be evident from the misspelling of her given name ("Besty" rather than "Betsy"). And not only does this Twitter account have far fewer followers than the official Betsy DeVos account (232,000 vs. 10,500), but it is also clearly labeled as a parody account:

The "Besty DeVos" account also posts a stream of tweets that are clearly satirical in nature:

DeVos was a controversial pick for her position as the head of the U.S. Department of Education and was criticized by some opponents as being "unprepared and unqualified" to serve as the nation's top educator.

The humorous tweet shown here inevitably took in some Twitter users, who read it as a sign that the current education secretary is herself uneducated. One viewer responded, for example: "That’s five words, Betsy. Can’t even get that right."

Sources

Paoletta, Rae.   "Science Teachers on Why Betsy DeVos Is a 'Monstrous Mistake.'"     Gizmodo.   7 February 2017.

Resmovits, Joy.   "Betsy DeVos "Is Unprepared and Unqualified' to Be Education Secretary, Charter School Booster Eli Broad Says."     Los Angeles Times.   1 February 2017.

Green, Erica L.   "‘Brain Performance’ Firm DeVos Invested in Is Hit for Misleading Claims."     The New York Times.   26 June 2018.

Bethania Palma is a journalist from the Los Angeles area who has been working in the news industry since 2006.