Sunny Hostin took a swing at Donald Trump, calling him a “DEI” hire during a rant about the president’s plans to eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.
Reacting to Trump’s announcement of scrapping DEI policies, “The View” co-host made a play on words, claiming Trump “Didn’t Earn It” but instead got the presidency through nepotism.
Hostin began by arguing, “Donald Trump saying things that this country would be a meritocracy, you’re talking about a man who didn’t become the president of the United States because of merit.”
She doubled down, saying Trump got where he is not because of hard work but because “he had no political experience” before entering the White House.
The latest absurd claim from The View’s Sunny Hostin:
President Donald J. Trump is a “DEI hire.”
Actually, it was the out-of-touch left-wing policies that Sunny believes in that helped get Trump hired. pic.twitter.com/7T7CzQXKuC
— Christian Collins (@CollinsforTX) January 21, 2025
“He was given everything that he has,” she added. “He is a legacy hire. He is, if anything, a DEI hire, a ‘didn’t earn it’ hire, and so, those are just some of the things I was thinking about.”
Things heated up further when Hostin criticized Trump’s actions on an important historical holiday, contrasting them with Martin Luther King’s vision.
She pointed out the stark difference between Trump’s directives and King’s legacy of striving for both racial and economic equality.
Trump orders all federal DEI staff to be put on leave pic.twitter.com/QdgqAiXRoL
— Shane Davis Wizard’s Favorite Break Out Artist 09! (@shanedavisart) January 22, 2025
She called it “hypocrisy” for Trump to be inaugurated as president on the same day dedicated to MLK while planning to ditch diversity-focused policies.
Hostin reminded “The View’s” largely liberal audience of King’s famous words, “‘It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps but to say to a bootless man he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.’”
Catturd and President Trump take on “The View.”@Time4SumAxShun@timfisher836@Cali_Cris1@sxdoc@smrose29@ScottPresler@KMGGaryde @Federalist85 @MrWhiteMAGA @Teresa_1776 @WickedDog3 @BasedSolutions1 @emma6USA@oh_laa_laa@LisaLisaHC@m86742@FLCons@media_laina… pic.twitter.com/WZYgDdpu2A
— EARTH!🇺🇸 (@earthing5000) November 25, 2024
She also added that “Black Americans deserve reparations for the injustices they face.”
Meanwhile, Trump wasted no time enforcing his promise to take a hard stance against DEI measures.
The new administration swiftly moved to axe all DEI-related roles within the federal workforce.
BREAKING: Trump says his government will be eliminating any and all forms of DEI and only recognize 2 genders pic.twitter.com/pxKnY5e0e2
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 20, 2025
A letter, first reported by CBS News, was sent to agency heads directing them to place all DEI employees on paid leave by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Trump also ordered the shutdown of DEI-focused offices in government agencies, calling these initiatives divisive and dismissing them as wasting taxpayer money.
The letter warned federal employees not to mask DEI activities with vague or coded language and threatened “adverse consequences” for anyone who failed to report such efforts within ten days.
Trump’s executive order, signed in front of a cheering crowd on Monday, rescinded a similar DEI initiative enacted by President Biden four years earlier.
The document stated that DEI programs “divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”
Agencies now face deadlines to dismantle DEI programs. By next Friday, all agencies must submit lists of employees hired through DEI policies for further termination processes.
Offices are required to outline how they will remove these initiatives completely, including detailed plans sent to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by January 31, 2025.
This drastic move came as part of a sweeping order titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions.”
It portrayed DEI initiatives as a harmful infiltration into federal workspaces, specifically criticizing Biden’s earlier order created to tackle racial disparities inside government institutions.
Sports commentator Stephen A. Smith also weighed in, highlighting his unease over the consequences of eliminating DEI measures.
“I’m concerned about it,” he told “The Will Cain Show.” “I’m certainly not going to celebrate it because I don’t like the way I believe the right is handling this particular issue.”
While he agreed on the importance of questions about fairness and meritocracy, he argued that some conservative critics of DEI were using the issue to unfairly imply incompetence among DEI hires.
Smith acknowledged the historical inequities that led to the creation of DEI policies, pointing out that “competent individuals from minority communities” once faced unjust hiring barriers.
He pointed to the NFL’s Rooney Rule as an example of how systemic inequities were addressed in sports, noting its effort to promote diversity in leadership roles like coaches and executives.
Smith noted that an organization ends up filling multiple positions with “White hires” in a post DEI America, that “you’re basically implying that all of those White folks are the best candidates, and we couldn’t find anybody from any different community that could be competent. That’s my concern.”
He concluded by urging institutions to tread carefully and be mindful of their hiring practices.
“[If] you know, 40% of the candidates are African-Americans or Latinos or a combination of the both and 60% of them are White, nobody’s going to have a problem with that,” he explained.
“But if 95 to 100% of them are White from the moment that DEI is eradicated, then you’re sending the message that the only reason other folks had those opportunities was because of DEI as opposed to their qualifications.”
Watch Tuesday’s full episode of “The View” if you’re so inclined here: