Trump, attacking DEI, promised to restore merit and hire the ‘best and brightest.’ His cabinet tests that theory

“He didn’t even keep to his promise to end DEI because his cabinet is clearly DEI for dumb people,” said Svante Myrick, president of People For the American Way.

When President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, he swiftly turned his bully pulpit against the nation’s diversity, equity, and inclusion infrastructure, arguing that Democratic administrations and private industries that utilized DEI policies and standards in hiring and contracting did so at their own peril.

President Trump vowed, as he did during his first term, that his Cabinet would reflect “merit-based opportunity” and represent the “best and brightest,” as opposed to DEI, which his administration has repeatedly ridiculed as “illegal discrimination” against white men. But after three high-profile Cabinet members facing controversies leaving office in less than two months, and several others expected to soon follow, the president’s vow to bring back so-called qualified and competent leadership is being called into question.

“He didn’t even keep to his promise to end DEI because his cabinet is clearly DEI for dumb people,” said Svante Myrick, the president and CEO of People For the American Way, a progressive advocacy group founded in 1980. He tells theGrio, “Trump claims they were the best. The eye test told us that they were incompetent. Turns out, they’re incompetent. And worse than that, you know, corrupt in many cases, and inept.”

Yesterday, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Trump’s Labor Secretary, resigned from office amid allegations of abuse of power and workplace misconduct. Allegations included an alleged inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, consuming alcohol while on duty, and using staff for personal matters.

Two weeks ago, Trump fired one of his most loyal Cabinet members, Pam Bondi, who served as his U.S. attorney general, transforming the U.S. Department of Justice into an agency filled with loyalists to the president who exacted revenge against Trump’s political enemies on his behalf. Bondi, who once struggled to answer whether she thought Trump was “honest,” faced political upheaval for her failure to transparently release all of the files from the FBI’s prosecution of now-deceased child sex trafficker and pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein.

The first Cabinet member to get the pink slip from President Trump was former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was embroiled in controversy for prominently featuring herself in a $220 million TV ad campaign, and some of those taxpaying dollars going to contract companies associated with her political allies. Noem also faced political headwinds for overseeing the Trump administration’s violent and deadly immigration enforcement.

“It’s just one high-profile failure after another, and it’s what comes from just hiring cronies,” said Myrick, a Cornell graduate, who in 2012 was elected the youngest mayor of Ithaca, New York, at the age of 24.

Democratic strategist Joel Payne says Trump’s Cabinet picks and anti-DEI agenda, which was spearheaded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who spews white nationalist ideology, was never about merit.

“DEI was a stand-in for ‘I believe that minorities, people of color, women, LGBT people, people from historically underrepresented populations and communities, have been given too much opportunity,” Payne tells theGrio. He continued, “Instead of the idea that by making sure that we make unseen populations seen, everybody gains. We know every bit of data and every bit of anecdotal evidence shows that that is true.”

The former Hillary Clinton campaign operative added, “Any expertise that’s presented by someone who is not a cisgender white, straight male, they have a problem with that. You have to disprove their skepticism.”

If D.C. political chatter and reporting are any indication, other members of the Trump Cabinet who have long faced controversy could follow the exits of Noem, Bondi, and Chavez-DeRemer, including FBI Director Kash Patel, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Patel was the subject of an expose published by The Atlantic, which cites dozens of sources describing Patel’s alleged abuse of alcohol while on the job, which has concerned colleagues and the FBI director’s security. FBI officials say they’re simply waiting for the inevitable.

Hegseth, a former Fox News host who was confirmed as the nation’s top military leader, was barely confirmed as Defense Secretary last year. He, too, faced reports of alcohol abuse, as well as alleged sexual misconduct, including a sexual assault case he settled for $50,000.

RFK Jr. also faced pushback to lead the country’s top health agency, considering he has no medical degree or certification and has pushed medical conspiracy theories about vaccines and claimed, without evidence, that Tylenol causes autism in children. Most recently, Kennedy was called out for past remarks he made about Black children with ADHD needing to be “re-parented.”

“[Trump] bullied several unqualified candidates through the confirmation process at the beginning of his term,” says Payne, who said it would not be surprising to see “a lot more turnover” within the administration.

“Trump’s cabinet is actually more like the liquor cabinet,” says Myrick. “Even from the moment of their appointment, they were the least qualified people for their respective positions.”

Trump touted how superior his Cabinet was to not simply justify his anti-DEI policies, but it came at the expense of a diversity and equity infrastructure designed to address racial disparities in employment, housing, health care access, education, and business ownership.

“Particularly alarming is the persistent disparity in unemployment rates for Black workers, which has remained consistently higher than the national average. Rather than addressing these inequities with meaningful policy solutions, the Trump Administration has weakened the very protections and programs designed to close those gaps,” the Congressional Black Caucus said in a statement following the Monday resignation of Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer.

Given Trump’s growing unpopularity with voters and Republicans’ frequent losses in special elections this year, Payne says any future nominations from Trump could signal a changing tide within the Trump administration; rather than simply installing loyalists with little to no experience in the departments they are hired to lead.

“I don’t think he has the political juice to do that right now,” he tells theGrio, pointing to the president’s recent selection of Dr. Erica Schwartz as the CDC director, who, if confirmed, would become the first Black woman to lead the public health agency.

“She certainly seems to have more bona fides than other nominees that Trump has put forward,” says Payne. “I think they are changing strategy internally because they know the political weather has changed drastically.”