Donald Trump doesn’t even know what he’s trying to do
The current Trump administration—just like the last one—isn’t only fueled by hate. Donald Trump and his minions have become well known for “governing” while displaying an alarming level of incompetence and recklessness. Yet another unfortunate example of this is the Pentagon’s DEI purge. It appears officials are tripping over themselves to erase diversity from existence and even history, to the point of absurdity.
You know something is very wrong when the Pentagon’s rush job flags a photo of the Enola Gay—the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945–for deletion because of the word “gay.” (The Enola Gay was named for the pilot’s mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, and has nothing to do with DEI.) Similarly, photos of an Army Corps of Engineers dredging project were flagged because an engineer’s last name was “Gay.” Another photo was supposedly problematic because the data collection about fish included “gender.”
This sloppy purge effort has put over 26,000 images under review, according to a report from the Associated Press. Many of the photos honoring women and Black service members are on the chopping block because Trump’s confusing day-one order offers zero guidance on maintaining historical content. So, for example, photos of the Tuskegee Airmen, depicting America’s first Black military pilots during World War II, are now at risk.
Not surprisingly, this slipshod (at best) approach is spilling out of the government sector and into the minds of some Trump supporters, according to a report from The Mary Sue. At a recent medical conference in Orlando, Florida, some people believed an auditory research project was about DEI—and proceeded to damage the display. The exhibit, about “the diversity of afferent firing,” was designed to educate medical professionals about hearing loss and auditory processing disorders. It has nothing to do with DEI (just like so many things with the word “diversity” in it).
This is exactly the bumbling we have come to expect from Trump’s so-called leadership over the years. A fervor to make a hateful point leads to a rushed effort. As a result, knee-jerk decisions happen amid a sea of confusion, creating an even larger mess. Welcome to Trump’s DEI purge fail.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month