Posted on 02/02/2025 6:00:36 AM PST by george76
If the legacy media wanted to prove that the movement for diversity, equity, and inclusion is a smokescreen for the Left’s woke priorities, it couldn’t do much better than USA Today’s response to President Donald Trump’s statement about Wednesday night’s horrific aircraft collision over Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Trump blamed DEI for the crash, suggesting that misplaced priorities in the previous administration had contributed to an environment where officials cut corners on safety in order to achieve left-wing goals.
USA Today reported that “civil rights leaders” slammed Trump for the remarks, but the paper led its coverage with one of the least credible organizations in America today.
Blaming a tragic air crash on what makes our country great, which is our diversity, equity and inclusion, it’s offensive, and it’s wrong, especially because we know these values make our nation stronger,’’ Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told USA Today.
USA Today featured her quote in the second paragraph of its story, as Exhibit A of the backlash.
That was a mistake of epic proportions.
What Did Trump Say?
Trump offered condolences Thursday to the families of 67 people killed in the collision of an Army helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet on Wednesday. He also pointed to DEI programs in federal agencies, such as the Federal Aviation Administration, as part of the problem possibly contributing to the crash.
Trump noted that he increased the standards for FAA officials during his first administration, but the Biden administration lowered them. He blamed then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for pushing DEI over high standards.
“The FAA’s diversity push includes a focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities,” he said.
One reporter asked him why he thought DEI might be responsible for the crash, and he replied, “Because I have common sense.”
Trump lamented that DEI gets in the way of hiring staff for competence—their basic ability to do the important jobs in front of them.
Southern Poverty Law Center..
The Southern Poverty Law Center is the last organization that should lecture Trump about the virtues of diversity and inclusion.
As I wrote in my book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC smears mainstream conservative and Christian organizations by placing them on a “hate map” alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. A former employee described that as a “highly profitable scam” to scare donors into ponying up cash.
A terrorist used the “hate map” to target a Christian nonprofit for a 2012 mass shooting that was thwarted by a security guard, and the SPLC currently faces a defamation lawsuit for branding a conservative nonprofit an “anti-immigrant hate group.”
The SPLC should have lost all credibility on the Left. It fired its co-founder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019. After that scandal, the staff unionized. Amid layoffs last year that included many union members, disgruntled staff accused the SPLC of union-busting.
Yet the Left still favors the SPLC.
My second book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” exposes how far-left activist groups—including the SPLC—infiltrated and advised the Biden administration. While conservatives often mock the SPLC as an irrelevant joke, the Left frequently uses it as a tool to silence its enemies, and the Biden administration reportedly solicited advice from the SPLC on how to combat “domestic terrorism.”
Diversity and Inclusion..
While the SPLC touts the virtues of “diversity,” it actively seeks to quash diversity of opinion by demonizing those who dissent from its leftist agenda. It brands conservatives who want to enforce immigration law “anti-immigrant hate groups.” It brands advocates for religious freedom “anti-LGBTQ hate groups.” It brands parental rights groups such as Moms for Liberty as “anti-government extremists.”
The SPLC doesn’t even stand for diversity within the LGBT movement. The center smeared Gays Against Groomers, a group of LGBT people who oppose transgender lessons in school, as an “anti-LGBTQ hate group” because the SPLC disagrees with its goals.
As for “inclusion,” it’s hard to find an organization that represents exclusion as well as the SPLC. Not only does it brand people who dissent from its agenda “haters,” suggesting they’re a threat on par with the Klan, but it also urges Big Tech, charitable donation platforms, and government to deplatform, debank, and otherwise “cancel” them.
The SPLC has launched and advised efforts to keep donors from giving to conservative causes. One of its key targets is the donor-advised fund—a kind of charitable savings account by which a financial institution operates a fund on behalf of donors and directs their dollars to causes the donors support.
The SPLC partnered with another group in the “Woketopus,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations, to publish a report called “Hate-Free Philanthropy,” which urges donor-advised funds to blacklist conservatives and Christians.
The SPLC also released a report on “extremist finance” that pressured donor-advised funds operated by major banks to blacklist “hate groups.”
In 2019, the Amalgamated Foundation, a project of the SEIU-owned Amalgamated Bank, launched the “Hate Is Not Charitable” campaign, urging donor-advised funds to blacklist groups the SPLC brands “hate groups.” The Service Employees International Union and Amalgamated Bank also bankroll the leftist groups that influenced Biden policy.
What Does All This Mean?
USA Today’s Deborah Barfield Barry quoted other activists in the article, but kept returning to the SPLC’s Huang. The reporter did not add any background about the SPLC’s scandals or its track record of quashing intellectual diversity and championing exclusion.
When Huang said that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is the secret to “what makes our country great,” she didn’t mean intellectual diversity. She meant the woke worldview based on critical race theory—the idea that American society is systemically racist and needs to promote racial minorities rather than apply the law in a colorblind fashion.
DEI may present itself as noble, but like the SPLC, it’s an attempt to stifle dissent and force radical change. DEI involves promoting people based on certain characteristics, rather than based on merit, and as such, it hinders important institutions like the FAA from hiring and promoting the most competent people for the job.
By giving voice to a morally bankrupt organization that uses DEI as a cudgel against its opponents, USA Today unwittingly helped reveal that Trump’s criticism of DEI is accurate, and that DEI is itself a smokescreen to pursue the woke agenda.
The SPLC needs investigation there was a sexual misconduct scandal in its ranks in the last ten years dealt with by lawyers linked to the Obama Administration.
A Marxist-Leninist mole organization in our midst.
I worked as the janitor in schools for many years plenty of printed SPLC material in classrooms, libraries. etc. etc.
Some say the co-pilot being gay was a factor, but
that doesn’t always factor in every mistake one makes.
It doesn’t.
It also makes people sit up and take notice about the
vagaries of DEI and a sorry lack of the common sense factor.
Trans or not, we just read the story of the New Zealand naval commander who ran her country’s premier, material assent aground. We also have seen where in Cal. an all female adm., within the fire dept, burnt up half the state...AND witnessed these goons’ half-assed, smug, summary lack of feeling for their failures!
It’s about the drive to meet ‘gender quota rules’ that are not workable ...certainly unworkable in life and death professions where a single oversight however minute will cost lives.
This angers me to the limit. 67+ lives were lost here and I have to think of it as murder...yes I’m angry
Where is it written that innocent people must make themselves a gift to this ideological sadism!!!????
ANOTHER THING...Trump KNEW this from the beginning of his first speech and it’s why he was so direct in his response by including DEI failures in his language! Right away I thought ... “He has ALL the facts and we’ll get them later.” At that time and since anyone wants to challenge him about it can FO!
America is fed up with bearing the cost for this deological joyride!
Does anyone read USA Today?
We needed about 1000 air traffic controllers or 2000 (per the union) - takes about 5 months to train, other than the 1000s that are already in the military. But Biden wanted 85,000 tax revenuers (which is a 4 year degree). Priorities on safety don’t you know, “if it saves one life it is worth it.” unless DEI is involved.
The important factor is not her sexuality. What is important, did she meet pilot standards or did DEI put her in the pilots seat? I do not know.
With her life quickly running out of control as a result of the change of policy, she took revenge and as a final act of a soon to be worthless life, downed the air liner
“Woman” scorned
Her being “gay” — which is one of the top DEI criteria —
easily put her in a “preferred” position, which pushed aside more qualified non-DEI people
who would have been less likely to mishandle vital aircraft details.
Trump never blamed the tragedy on DEI but said its possible but the DEI cancer still needs to be addressed if it is not found to be a factor. This cancer has permeated all government agencies as well as private corporation leaving those working along side them and the general public in danger
Does anyone read USA Today?
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I doubt they have hardly any subscribers. I think they give them away at hotels. About as thick as the old “Weekly Reader”. Shrinking.
The SPLC has labeled the Singing Nuns a hate group. It is also used by the FBI. It was part of smear of Catholics,
How did DEI do for the staffing of the air traffic controllers?
Liberals are inherently stupid which is why they completely miss the fact that liberal hierarchy is content with ordinary citizens dying if it furthers the liberal agenda.
Even when it's good Nazis dying they're still ok with it as long as it furthers the liberal agenda..
Note: Nazi=liberalism.
DEI allows the unfit to have advantages. How is that good for effectiveness, efficiency and competence? DEI and other woke attitudes contribute to the failure of societies everywhere.
“Blaming a tragic air crash on what makes our country great, which is our diversity, …”
The diversity he speaks of is superficial and incidental, which makes HIM the racist. In fact most Americans and most of the legal immigrants who came here were of ONE mind: To work and to be free. There is and has been little diversity in America and that is why she has succeeded for so long.
White men were denied jobs!
Tyler O’Neil’s book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
<><>writes the SPLC smears mainstream conservative and Christian organizations
<><>places them on a SPLC “hate map” alongside Ku Klux Klan.
<><>hate is a “highly profitable SPLC scam” to scare donors into ponying up cash.
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