Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross said Trump thinks merit and excellence are ‘only found in White men’
A former Obama campaign advisor blasted the Trump administration’s efforts to combat diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies in the federal government, likening the president to a Ku Klux Klan member.
“He doesn’t believe in fairness, and at this point, he might as well just put on the white hood, because every Black person in this country in particular knows what message this is signaling and knows exactly what he’s doing when he talks, the way he talks, and when he employs these types of regulations,” Ameshia Cross said Saturday on MSNBC.
Cross made the racially-charged comments in response to a question regarding President Donald Trump’s recent executive order calling for a formal review of FAA hiring practices during the Biden administration.
The order came in response to the tragic DC plane crash which killed 67 people Wednesday, after an Army helicopter collided with a passenger jet near Reagan National Airport. Immediately after the crash, some speculated that the FAA’s DEI policies may have played a role in the disaster.
“This shocking event follows problematic and likely illegal decisions during the Obama and Biden Administrations that minimized merit and competence in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),” the order said.
“We must have only the highest standards for people who work in our aviation system. I changed the standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary… We must have safety first. Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first,” the president said at a press conference the day after the crash. “We need to have our smartest people, it doesn’t matter what they look like.”
Cross claimed that Trump’s executive orders and rhetoric bashing DEI hiring practices are little more than thinly veiled racism, and accused the president of trying to “erase the achievements and accomplishments and history of Black people.”