After dismantling DEI, Trump hires another unqualified person

Do you remember all that Trump administration hand-wringing over the unfairness of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, how they allegedly gave preferential treatment to unqualified candidates based on race or sexual orientation? 

Never mind that none of that was what DEI was about. It’s about simple guidelines that promote fairness and participation for all people. This included the differently abled and the elderly. It should be something we all strive for, given that for many of us, we lived in a time in which discrimination against these very people, including most non-white males, was the law of the land.

That so many people felt threatened by the very benign act of providing a welcoming environment for all people is sad. It would be inexplicable if we couldn’t pinpoint precisely the source of all these folks’ fears. Many of them are indeed victims themselves – though willful ones – of the past forty years of “othering” that has been the GOP’s primary strategy for dividing America, for making people think that if certain groups finally got their opportunities to thrive in the world, something must necessarily be taken from them. 

But none of that is the point here. The point here is that Donald Trump just fired one of the most qualified, decorated, competent and honorable men to ever serve this nation – and he did it with his usual wrecking ball thoughtlessness. 

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman CQ Brown, a Four-Star Air Force General with 41 years of military service; F16 fighter pilot and instructor with 3,000 flight hours – 130 of those in combat – a Master’s degree in aeronautical science; the son of a US Army colonel and Vietnam veteran and the grandson of a WWII veteran, was summarily let go on Friday night.

And why was this exceptional man fired by the president? He echoed support for the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd. Trump firing a man supporting a movement for equal justice is every bit the tell that a poker player dripping sweat down his forehead every time he bluffs is.

If you guessed correctly that Trump has replaced Brown with a man who was so unqualified Trump had to seek a waiver to nominate him, then you’ve probably been paying attention this past month and are familiar with the Trump playbook of selecting unqualified loyalists to serve his administration. Dan Caine does have military experience but hardly has the resume required of past Joint Chiefs of Staff nominees. In fact, he has one fewer star than Brown, has expertise in entrepreneurship and aerospace manufacturing and just recently took a job as a venture capitalist. 

What he is, and why he almost certainly got the job, is a devout Trump loyalist. There’s a word for a leader of a country hiring loyalists to the highest ranks of the military and I bet I don’t have to tell you what that word is.

He is, in other words, exactly the thing MAGA has bemoaned as the whole problem with DEI – the hiring unqualified people. That Caine is also a white man might be considered coincidence … if you were to ignore everything Trump’s life has been up to this point – a man who refused to rent to African Americans; a man who maliciously, falsely and knowingly questioned the citizenship of our first Black president; a man who called for the execution of the Central Park Five and refused to retract any of his statements against them even after they were exonerated; a man who refers to African nations as ‘shithole’ countries; a man whose words and deeds have earned him the ongoing enthusiastic support of white supremecist groups; and so much more.

It is, once again, an example of such rank hypocrisy, such overt race preferencing, such grotesque disregard for America’s safety that, a decade ago, it would have been the stuff of disbelief. That it’s just another day in TrumpWorld should never stop horrifying us. 

DEI indeed.