Don’t Fall for Trump’s D.E.I. Dodge

Donald Trump does not care about merit.

If he cared about merit, then Pete Hegseth — a former Fox News host who has been accused of having a history of alcohol abuse and professional malfeasance — would not be secretary of defense. If he cared about merit, then JD Vance — with even less experience than one of his least experienced predecessors, Dan Quayle — would not be vice president of the United States. And if he cared about merit, then neither Robert F. Kennedy Jr. nor Kash Patel would be a hair’s breadth away from serving as secretary of health and human services or director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Trump does not care about merit, but he talks about merit all the time. It is the key term in his war on diversity, equity and inclusion policies, or D.E.I. But if Trump does not care about actual merit then what, exactly, is he going on about? What is “merit” and what is an anti-meritocratic D.E.I. policy?

Trump gave us one answer last week when he revoked a 60-year-old nondiscrimination order and shut down civil rights enforcement at the Justice Department. He gave us another when he issued an executive order mandating “patriotic education” and taking aim at any teaching that dwells on this country’s troubled history of racial hierarchy and subordination. He gave us another answer on Wednesday when Secretary Hegseth paused military recognition of Black History Month as part of his effort to uproot D.E.I. and show that “diversity is not our strength.” And Trump gave us one more, during a Thursday news conference, when both he and Vice President Vance blamed diversity for the midair collision near Washington National Airport that claimed 67 lives the night before.

“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system,” Trump said. “Only the highest aptitude, they have to be the highest intellect and psychologically superior people were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers.” He then went on to complain, falsely, that the Federal Aviation Administration under President Joe Biden and his transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, was “actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.”

Further abusing the truth, Trump said that the F.A.A. had “determined that the work force was too white,” but, he continued, “we want the people that are competent.”

Vance also told reporters that the government under Biden had turned away potential air traffic controllers “because of the color of their skin” and that the push for diversity in government “put stresses on the people who are already there,” presumably leading them to make mistakes.