Maddow Brutally Mocks Trump DEI Attacks: ‘White Power Vibe’ Undercut By ‘Ostentatiously Dumb’ Actions
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow brutally mocked President Donald Trump and his administration over their attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, saying the “White Power vibe” is undermined by incompetent execution.
DEI has morphed from a poorly coded campaign talking point into a batch of executive orders, a go-to scapegoat for air disasters, and a target for a wide range of actions that include shuttered government offices and scattershot website deletions.
On Tuesday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, the host took on some of those actions, suggesting that not only does the “ostentatious stupidity” reduce the intimidation factor, but also that “When you push back on them, they cave”:
I think it’s — I think it’s pretty obvious now to everybody that they are using DEI as a — as a just a pretext. They’re giving everything that, you know, unfashionable boogeyman label to try to avoid people in general, realizing that what they’re really doing is just wrecking the U.S. government, just knocking it down.
That’s — that’s the point of all of this. Whatever label they’re putting on it.
But of course, none of the things they’re trying to do will inevitably come to pass. They’re not omnipotent, and they keep screwing up and they keep caving when people push back.
So, for example, in the wake of thousands of CDC websites being taken down days ago, purportedly because of DEI concerns about those websites, quote, by Monday, some of the pages that had been deleted on the CDC’s website had reappeared in response to intense media coverage, backlash from the scientific community, and concern for the public’s health.
When you push back on them, they cave.
They want to do things that are easy for them to do, anything that seems hard for them to do. They stop doing. Its– pressure works.
But you know what? Stupidity works, too. When they behave in particularly ostentatiously stupid ways, when they behave in ways that are obviously and ostentatiously dumb. It has two effects.
It undercuts the air of intimidation and omnipotence that they’ve tried to use to get their way. I mean, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have the worst and most malicious intentions. They clearly do.
But it — it gives lie to the fact that they’re just not that good at any of the things they’re trying to do. I mean, they’re it.
It may be, for example, that there’s there is a real white power vibe behind all the anti-DEI stuff they are doing. But if the way they’re approaching it is to say in part, that there can no longer be the inclusion of a self-addressed, stamped envelope in any government mailing, or that you’re banned from talking about the equity markets because, ooh, equity. Well, that level of stupidity has the benefit of making us less intimidated by them because they’re being dumb.
It also has the benefit of emboldening people to push back.
Watch above via MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.
