MAGA Would Be Calling Black Democrats ‘DEI Hires’ If They Leaked White House War Plans

On Jan. 24, 2025, Pete Hegseth — a Fox News host and Army National Guard veteran who had no previous experience in national defense — was confirmed as President Donald Trump’s Cabinet pick for Secretary of National Defense. Hegseth replaced Lloyd Austin, a Black 4-star general who served as the 28th national defense secretary, the 12th commander of U.S. Central Command and the 33rd vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army. The concerns of government and military officials, including top Pentagon officials, that Hegseth’s resume didn’t come anywhere near the vicinity of being adequate for the job he had been nominated for and confirmed to was widely reported. It didn’t matter, though. What white conservatives call a “meritocracy” is just default America, where non-white men are heavily scrutinized and easily dismissed while white male mediocrity is invisible, allowing white men to fail upwards routinely.

Ironically, upon his confirmation, Hegseth made it his top priority to rid the military of all things diversity, equity and inclusion — while serving as a prime example of how full of it white conservatives are when they claim to be anti-DEI (unless it’s being used as an acronym for Descendant of European Immigrants).

On March 24, exactly two months after Hegseth was confirmed, the Atlantic published a piece written by the publication’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote that he was included in a group text that revealed detailed war plans to bomb Yemen on March 15, 2025. The group chat, which was shared via the Signal messaging app, included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Vice President JD Vance, none of whom appeared to notice that a journalist right-wingers are not very fond of was also included. (That “meritocracy” is looking more and more like an Idiocracy by the day.) Not long after the story was published, the White House confirmed that the war room group chat leak had happened, but that didn’t stop Hegseth from going straight to the airwaves to claim that Goldberg is a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called-journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.” (In reality, Goldberg has only ever been “discredited” by conservatives who use strawman logic and confirmation bias to shout “fake news” at every report they don’t like while intentionally misrepresenting what the claims they dispute are even about.)

Here’s a simple indisputable truth: If Hegseth, Waltz, Rubio, Vance and Gabbard were Democratic appointees who were Black (or POC, or trans, or women, or disabled — but especially Black), the entire MAGA world would be calling them “DEI hires.”

Even if you were to argue that I’m being speculative here, there’s no denying that it’s speculation based on an easily observable pattern of racist MAGA behavior.

Actually, I’ve written about this before:

No one has really provided tangible evidence that the response to the wildfires in Southern California has truly been mismanaged, but that hasn’t stopped MAGAts in right-wing media and on social media from suggesting that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is an incompetent “DET hire” (white people’s new N-word). When a major bridge in Baltimore collapsed last year Republicans immediately tied the tragedy to DEI simply because Maryland’s port commissioner is a Black woman and Baltimore’s mayor, Brandon Scott, is a Black man. No such attacks were ever leveled at the leaders of Tennessee during its multiple wildfire disasters, Florida during its many hurricane disasters, or any other Republican-led states that overcame natural disasters so long as white male officials were leading those states. (Even if they were white male Democrats, they wouldn’t be instantly connected to DEI.)

Hell, when Barack Obama first ran for president, the leading narrative of Republicans (who were trying their hardest to pretend they were not racist) was that Obama was underqualified with only four years in the U.S. Senate and eight years in the Illinois state Senate under his belt. Immediately after Obama’s two terms, the same Republicans and white conservatives gleefully elected a white male president who had not a day’s experience in governing, lawmaking or judiciary work. Yet, during the most recent presidential campaign, Trump supporters repeatedly called VP Kamala Harris a “DEI candidate” who is woefully underqualified for the office of commander-in-chief despite her eight years as San Francisco’s 27th district attorney, eight years as California’s 32nd attorney general, four years as a U.S. senator and four years as vice president of the United States.

By the end of January, “DEI FBI” was trending on social media in reference to FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Alethea Duncan, a Black woman, who remarked that the New Year incident in which a Muslim man intentionally rammed his truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing more than a dozen people, was not initially considered a “terrorist event” by the FBI, which contradicted a statement made prior by New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who did refer to the event as terrorism while the investigation was still in its infancy. Duncan was following the same protocol a white and male FBI assistant special agent would have been tasked with following, but she’s a Black woman, so she’s a “DEI hire.”

These are only a few examples of how white conservatives have allowed white conservative propaganda to make “DEI hire” their latest socially acceptable racial slur.

But when it comes to Hegseth and his cohorts, the MAGA world is all about excuses and denial. In fact, this week, Trump and a slew of Republican officials, including some who were part of the exposed group chat, and plenty of right-wing media talking heads, joined Hegseth in outright denying that the information included in the chat was classified, prompting Goldberg to clap back with receipts.

It was never about merit. MAGA conservatives like to claim they “don’t see color,” but, truthfully, they don’t see incompetence no matter how obvious it is so long as white men, and, particularly, white male conservatives, are in charge. When Black people are in positions of power, incompetence is all they see, no matter how scarce the evidence of it is.

It’s just racism, y’all. Plain and simple.

SEE ALSO:

Target Boycotts Increase As Company Suffers Backlash Over Anti-DEI Policy

Jackie Robinson’s Army History Erased From Department Of Defense Website As Trump’s DEI Purge Continues

, Here are a few examples of how conservatives have allowed MAGA propaganda to make “DEI hire” their latest acceptable racial slur., , Read More, National, Politics, News Archives – Black America Web, [#item_full_content].