| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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With insider interviews, industry updates, and bestsellers lists. | |
| Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org slash podcasts. | ||
| Live Wednesday on C-SPAN. | ||
| At 10 a.m. Eastern, the Senate Finance Committee will hold a confirmation hearing on the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. | ||
| On C-SPAN 2, the Senate returns at noon to continue work on the nomination of Lee Zeldon to be EPA Administrator. | ||
| A final vote is scheduled later in the day. | ||
| Lawmakers will also work on the nomination of Doug Bergham to be Interior Secretary. | ||
| And over on C-SPAN 3 at 10.30, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will begin a nomination hearing for Howard Lutnick, President Trump's nominee to be U.S. Secretary of Commerce. | ||
| And then at 3.30, the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Kelly Loeffler to head the Small Business Administration. | ||
| These events all stream live on the free C-SPAN Now video app and online at C-SPAN.org. | ||
| Joining us guys now is Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation. | ||
| He's a senior fellow there talking about the Trump administration, the effort on DEI programs. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Pedro. | |
| It's great to be here on with you. | ||
| Talk about the Heritage Foundation. | ||
| People probably know what it is, but from your perspective in the DEI space, what's the Heritage Foundation's take on it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, as people probably know, it's a conservative think tank. | |
| We formulate policies. | ||
| One of the things that we do, and I'm a big part of that process, is oppose diversity, equity, and inclusion for reasons that I can explain. | ||
| These are words that sound very mom and apple pie, diversity, equity, and inclusion. | ||
| Who could be against that? | ||
| But what we have concluded is that as they are now interpreted, they mean the opposite. | ||
| Diversity is the opposite. | ||
| It actually means quotas which are illegal. | ||
| Equity is the functional opposite of equality. | ||
| It means that you have to treat the government or the private sector have to treat individual Americans differently depending on their race. | ||
| And inclusion means language codes. | ||
| You know, if I wear a cap that says Jesus Saves to them all, I can be thrown out in the name of inclusion because that's not inclusive language. | ||
| So that's the reason we have chosen to oppose these policies, we think, for many other reasons as well. | ||
| But I wanted to explain that party said, how can anybody be against diversity, equity, and inclusion for that reason? | ||
| Is there a specific program in the federal government that practices what you just said? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, there are anything that requires all anything that requires federal contractors to practice, to require them to show that they do DEI practice, they have DEI trainings, or that they hire, they have, they hire, promote preferentially on race or sex, any of these things. | |
| And by the way, all these things are illegal. | ||
| So throughout the federal government, especially in the last four years, when Biden first came in, the first thing he did was sign, that's the very first thing of his administration, Executive Order 13589, which really spread diversity and inclusion, DEI, throughout all the federal governments, doing all these things which are illegal and I would add immoral. | ||
| This is not a new concept, though, as far as programs is concerned, when it comes to the federal government. | ||
| Why now? | ||
| Why the focus so sharply now, do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the reason for that is that they really put it, yes, you're absolutely right. | |
| These things have been building up, especially in the last 10 years. | ||
| But since 2020, when we had the riots in the street, the BLM riots, and then Biden gets elected in the back of that mayhem and COVID-19, we had a huge push on the part of The cultural gatekeepers on the part of the corporate world, | ||
| but especially on the part of the Biden administration because of Executive Order 13985, which said all of the government, every agency, every department must have a DEI program and enforce it and have an office, a director of DEI must enforce it, must have all these things. | ||
| So that is the reason why it was put on steroids. | ||
| In fact, Trump began to see some of this, and in September 2020, just a few months before the election, two months before the election, he banned DEI practices because he saw what was happening in 2020. | ||
| What he has done now is go back to that ban. | ||
| Absent of those programs, how do you ensure that the government is diverse, is equitable, is inclusive? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, that's a great question. | |
| I was very hardened, very happy that one of the executive orders starts out by saying we have civil rights laws that must be enforced. | ||
| You know, we have to treat every American with dignity. | ||
| We have to hire on a colorblind and promote, on a colorblind approach, and we must actively enforce our nation's civil rights laws. | ||
| Everything is predicated on that. | ||
| Elaborate on that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, everything is predicated on the fact that we have a very robust set of civil rights structure and apparatus. | |
| That we have the Civil Rights Act itself, we have Title VI, we have Title VII, we have the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which says that all Americans must be treated, we must receive equal treatment under the law. | ||
| And if we apply that, if we make sure that the first use of affirmative action, not the first use that was in FDR in the 40s, but the first use in the modern era by Kennedy in 1961 actually was an executive order that said that government contractors had to hire and promote without regard to race, without regard to race. | ||
| We have to enforce that, the original meaning of affirmative action. | ||
| And then it got turned around, unfortunately, post-65 into hiring and promoting with regard to race, racial quotas and so forth. | ||
| We have to go back to Kennedy's original meaning. | ||
| You wrote a recent piece for the Heritage Foundation, taking a look at the programs itself, but the headline just says Mr. Trump's dismantling of DEI is deeper and bigger than you even know. | ||
| How is it deeper and bigger? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, because he goes back, for example, one of the things he did was rescind an executive order by LBJ in 1965, Executive Order 11246, which really set the precedent for quotas. | |
| That executive order was signed only two months after LBJ gave his Howard commencement speech in which he turned around the meaning of the civil rights from what I just said, hiring and promoting without regard to race, to hiring and promoting with regard to race. | ||
| And that is a, I think it shows a degree of sophistication by the Trump people that was not there at the beginning of the first term. | ||
| They have come in and they have really done their homework. | ||
| And there's a colleague of mine at Heritage, Giancarlo Canaparo, who has been writing extensively on EEO 11246, saying anything that is done without rescinding this LBJ EO of 1965 will be for naught. | ||
| And lo and behold, in Trump's second day executive order on DEI, he revokes that LBJ. | ||
| This is from the Labor Department saying it's that executive order you mentioned that was signed by LBJ on September of 1965, established requirements for non-discriminatory practice in hiring and employment on the part of the U.S. government contractors. | ||
| It prohibits federal contractors and federally assisted construction contractors and subcontractors who do business with the federal government from discriminating in employment decisions on the base of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. | ||
|
unidentified
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It is interpreted from that point onward to mean quotas. | |
| And it is cited to mean quotas for the decades, the decades since. | ||
| And so if that is gone, what ensures that the principles stay the same? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We have the Civil Rights Act. | |
| We have Title VII, we have Title VII. | ||
| You know, we cannot act. | ||
| We're a very, very diverse country, as evidenced by you and I here sitting here at this table. | ||
| We cannot have the government act or make decisions based on race. | ||
| This is what has been happening on steroids under Biden. | ||
| This puts an end to that. | ||
| So enforce the Civil Rights Act, enforce the Constitution, the Constitution of 87, of 1787, which is the only one we have. | ||
| Liberals like to think we have a living Constitution that can be rewritten every year. | ||
| No, we have to live by that one as it has been amended. | ||
| Well, it was amended after the Civil War. | ||
| The 14th Amendment says all Americans have to be treated with equal treatment under the law. | ||
| We have to apply that. | ||
| Mike Gonzalez with the Heritage Foundation joining us. | ||
| He's their senior fellow. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions about the programs, 2027 8-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you want to text your comments or questions, do that at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Mr. Gonzalez, the President talks about a merit-based way of approach. | ||
| How do you think that works itself forward, absent from the programs that are being eliminated or paused? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, let's take, for example, university admissions. | |
| You admit people on the basis of their GPA, on the basis of their standardized tests, their SATs, the ACTs, on the degree of after-school activities they have demonstrated to have done. | ||
| And you do not make a decision, especially one as important as school admissions with regard to race. | ||
| You admit this person actually has the ability to do the academic work that is required at an institution of higher learning because she has demonstrated it in high school and junior high. | ||
| You admit on the level of that, that is meritocracy, and that is what all of us ask. | ||
| We want to be, when we achieve something, we want to say, I did that through my hard work. | ||
| I didn't go to the party. | ||
| I stayed home and did my homework. | ||
| I really, I crunched the numbers. | ||
| I deserved that job. | ||
| I deserved that promotion. | ||
| We all have, all Americans have the right to claim that. | ||
| And I think we need to restore that. | ||
| And can the federal government do the same, restore that? | ||
| You use the university example. | ||
| What about the federal government and its hiring practices and the like? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, obviously, yes. | |
| The same thing is replicated through the federal government, through the private sector. | ||
| A colorblind approach to does this person have the requirements to fulfill this job? | ||
| Is this person going to add value to my company? | ||
| Is this person have, does he or she have the requirements to do right by the American people in the case of the federal government? | ||
| Did you expect the president to enact so many things in the first week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| I must say, because in this area, which is the area that I researched, I was elated. | ||
| I expected DEI. | ||
| I expected it. | ||
| I actually expected it in an education EO. | ||
| I expected it to be all in and one only. | ||
| I don't think anybody expected 22 executive orders, no, 26, excuse me, in the first day. | ||
| President Bush, George W. Bush, did not issue a single executive order in his first and/or second term, in his first day. | ||
| Barack Obama issued, I think, two in his first day, in his first term, and none in his second term. | ||
| 22 is a record. | ||
| I think, and they're all ironclad. | ||
| They have been really crushing this in the transition and before the transition. | ||
| It shows a level of sophistication that really differs from anything we've seen before in previous administrations, but including Trump's first term. | ||
| When, you know, this shows that they come in with experience and meaning to do business. | ||
| Let's hear from yours. | ||
| This is from Patricia. | ||
| She's in New Jersey. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
| You're on with Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead, please. | |
| Good morning, America. | ||
| I just want to say this is a reminder: we've only had civil rights since the 60s. | ||
| And all of the people who come to America have benefited from the fight, even before that, the 60s, from the fight of African Americans to make your life better. | ||
| And other people who come here better, even Europeans from Eastern Europe now, they live great because of African Americas' fight. | ||
| So, yeah, we do need some type of civil rights being enforced, but it's not happening, as we can see. | ||
| Thank you for letting me share. | ||
| Patricia, New Jersey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I 100% agree with Patricia. | |
| I think we need civil rights enforced and enforced strongly. | ||
| I think that the federal government and all the authorities need to make sure that all of the United States, anybody hiring or contracting or promoting, abides by the civil rights regulations that we have and by the structure that we have to make sure that Americans are treated according to their ability and according to their actions, not according to some immutable characteristic which they can do nothing about. | ||
| And these two are obviously race and sex. | ||
| You know, these are immutable characteristics. | ||
| You're born with them. | ||
| You cannot be judged on these traits. | ||
| From John. | ||
| John in New Mexico, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm the first time caller. | ||
| And I have been watching this show quite a bit, like the last year, and it's just beyond me, the gall of the Democrats. | ||
| I mean, the Democrats, they started off the backs of slaves. | ||
| Andrew Jackson in Mississippi. | ||
| How come the Democrats don't talk about their history? | ||
| Then after the Civil War, which the Democrats were rebelling against America and wanted to start a new country of their own, I mean, I am so sad that my country has devolved. | ||
| Okay, that's John there in New Mexico. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You don't have to go back to Jefferson Davis or any of the Democrats of the 19th century. | |
| The Democrats of the previous administration that just concluded on January 20th violated the law in the sense that it is very plain that you cannot consider race, you cannot have racial quotas back. | ||
| The Supreme Court decided in Backing in 1978 that quotas were unconstitutional. | ||
| All the other statutes that I have just mentioned before made clear that you cannot consider race in making decisions. | ||
| It got to the point where the New York Times called us, called Heritage, in late 21 or early 22, I forget which, and said, look, the administration realizes that by having this raft of laws that are race-based, it's violating the law and it's loosening in the courts. | ||
| So it's going to change the language. | ||
| It's going to change the language. | ||
| It's going to do the same thing. | ||
| It's going to change the language to underserved communities. | ||
| It found euphemisms. | ||
| But it continued doing that. | ||
| So, yeah, I don't think that we have to go back to Jefferson Davis. | ||
| As awful as he was and as disgusting as those Democrats were, what we have just seen recently was bad enough. | ||
| And I agree with John. | ||
| Let me take you back in time a week, though. | ||
| Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, he spoke about the EEOs, particularly targeting DEI programs, gave his perspective on it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want you to listen to what he has to say and get your perspective on it. | |
| Diversity, equity, and inclusion are American values. | ||
| It's about economic opportunity for everyone. | ||
| We support merit for everyone based on what you know, not who you know. | ||
| The problem that seems to be unfolding is that there are some in this country who want an America of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires. | ||
| Not for working class Americans, middle-class Americans, or everyday Americans. | ||
| A country of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires. | ||
| Diversity, equity, and inclusion are about economic opportunity for everyone, even if you're not wealthy, well-off, or well-connected. | ||
| These are values that everybody in this country should embrace. | ||
| And we're going to take this issue, working with the civil rights groups, head on. | ||
| The minority leader's assessment. | ||
| What's your assessment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I thought it was an outrageous comment that he made. | |
| You reminded me, Pedro, that I told my colleague Andrew Olivastro that I was going to have a response to this. | ||
| It is outrageous that they're now painting DEI as mom on apple pie and as part of the meritocracy. | ||
| It is the opposite of that. | ||
| DEI was the opposite. | ||
| It promotes the opposite approach. | ||
| It says that you cannot hire, if you go back, EDEI is the operating system of a bunch of critical theories that emerged in the 80s and 90s, critical race theory, gender theory, and all that. | ||
| All DEI does, it applies them. | ||
| The DEI trainings are a way to indoctrinate the country in the workplace or the schoolhouse into not liking the status quo, hating the status quo, hating history, hating the origin of America, and adopting a completely different approach, a completely different race-based, race- and sex-based preferential treatment, which is unconstitutionally moral, dangerous. | ||
| Now they're saying, no, this DEI is about the meritocracy. | ||
| No, it is not. | ||
| And I can show you, I don't know, I bring it with me, you know, reams of writings by the pioneers of critical race theory in which they take issue with the meritocracy. | ||
| They say the meritocracy is a lie, that we cannot have a meritocracy. | ||
| You should not be seeking a meritocracy. | ||
| If that is the best they can do, we have the goods and we have the receipts. | ||
| Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation joining us. | ||
| This is Greg in North Carolina Independent Line. | ||
| You're next up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for taking my call. | |
| First, I'm a 21-year military veteran. | ||
| I have a couple issues with your guests. | ||
| One when you open, you mentioned the fact that there were riots in the street. | ||
| However, omitted the fact that it was based on the reaction from George Floyd, which gives a misleading perception of what he's speaking about to begin with. | ||
| Secondly, Jim Crow was a major reason for a push for programs like DEI because of race-based hiring practices that America was already participating in, which is insane for you to perceive it as not being necessary now. | ||
| And lastly, the DEI practices that are trying to be implemented now are taking away the training for Tuskegee airmen to be mentioned in Air Force basic training, which my grandfather was one of. | ||
| I'd just like a response to that. | ||
| Well, Greg, you mentioned that you were a veteran. | ||
| On behalf of my family, thank you for your service. | ||
| I thank you for what you did. | ||
| I think you're quite wrong on several fronts. | ||
| When you talk about the riots in 2020, I don't think that they were, I think it was a manipulation by organizations founded by Marxists who wanted to change the country. | ||
| And we had quite a great deal of violence for many, many months. | ||
| You mentioned that DEI is a response to Jim Crow. | ||
| No, and this is a mistake that good-natured people, Americans of good will, make consistently. | ||
| The response to Jim Crow with Kennedy's original affirmative action executive order of 61, which was to say the federal government and federal contractors will not anymore hire or promote with regard to race, ethnicity, national origin. | ||
| That was the original meaning of it. | ||
| It was reversed in the years that followed, especially from 1965 on, as I mentioned, after LBJ made his comments at Howard in 1965 and then with Executive Order 11246. | ||
| And then I just want to make sure that I address the Tuskegee, the study in Tuskegee. | ||
| I believe that this is somebody inside, was it the Air Force? | ||
| I forget. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was inside the Air Force that wants to sabotage this. | |
| And just like librarians who are told not to have porn on their shelves will then ban Romeo and Juliet to create a scandal and attract media attention. | ||
| This is the same way. | ||
| Whoever did that was probably sabotaging the intent of the order. | ||
| Yes, absolutely, everybody should study what happened at Tuskegee. | ||
| Just there's recent reporting saying that the course that features the Tuskegee Airport now replaced the airport. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course, of course, because I hope that person is talked to. | |
| The president, when it comes to those federal employees involved in DEI programs, there's reporting saying that those people should be laid off. | ||
| What do you think of that step? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they're going to be put on paid leave first. | |
| And then I actually think that's perfectly reasonable, and that's what should happen. | ||
| We're going to have a problem with these people because a lot of them Have studied really bad degrees, things that end in studies, ethnic studies, Hispanic studies, gender studies, things that do not give you the skills to create value in the private sector or to do right by the American people in the public sector. | ||
| They have insane salary expectations. | ||
| They're now going to be out there without their job. | ||
| Their job was, again, to repeat, illegal, in many cases, illegal, created danger for the country. | ||
| It was immoral in my view. | ||
| What happens to those people will be very interesting to follow. | ||
| Let's hear from Bob. | ||
| Bob's in New York. | ||
| Democrats line. | ||
| You're next up, sir. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my call. | |
| I have a question about DAI and this policy. | ||
| This DAI policy that you have was written in the project 2025, of which the man that wrote 2025 is ahead of the budget in this administration. | ||
| My question to you is this. | ||
| During the campaign, many people here on this network had said Donald, President Trump, had said that he had no association with this particular project, that he did not know these particular people that put out this particular paper, and that he was distancing himself from 2025. | ||
| It looks to me like 2025 is now in the playbook. | ||
| And my question to you is this: Did the President Trump, did Donald, lie to the American public during the campaign that he was saying that he had no association with this particular program? | ||
| Bob from New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bob, President Trump speaks for himself. | |
| I don't pretend to speak for him or his administration. | ||
| I'll tell you, I wrote a chapter in Project 2025. | ||
| It had nothing to do with DEI. | ||
| Well, it did tangentially. | ||
| It was about dissolving the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, not C-SPAN, which I think does a fantastic job. | ||
| We're not having no association with the corporation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I know. | |
| I know that. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| I can tell you as a fact that the idea that I would have called anybody in the Trump campaign or the transition to ask anything about what I was writing is ludicrous. | ||
| They lied about us. | ||
| They lied about the project. | ||
| They lied about the intent of the project. | ||
| They spent millions of it for nothing, by the way. | ||
| That was money that they burned. | ||
| No, I never, I wrote what I thought was right. | ||
| I wrote, according to my research, never called anybody to ask what they thought of it. | ||
| Brandy in Indiana, Republican line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm just calling. | ||
| I love the show, of course, but I'm calling. | ||
| I kind of have a perspective on this show. | ||
| I am recently retired human resources, and I can remember when we had to meet a quota for black Hispanic people in our office. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it was very hard. | |
| I mean, there were times we had to overlook somebody who was well qualified, but we had to change it for somebody else who was less qualified, but because of the color of their skin. | ||
| And we had to do this every year. | ||
| We got audited. | ||
| And it was ridiculous. | ||
| And then my other side of this is two of my children are biracial. | ||
| And all through their school years, I was always, I would always make a box and make biracial because they're not black and they're not white. | ||
| But the school demanded and wanted me to put black because of more benefits. | ||
| It benefits the school. | ||
| benefits this. | ||
| Then when they got in college, we had a long conversation because they had to pay for college. | ||
| And I told them, you do it however you want because this is up to you. | ||
| But both of my children did not want to be in a victim box. | ||
| They continued their biracial, this is what I am. | ||
| You cannot make me choose one box or the other. | ||
| And that probably cost them some grants and what have you. | ||
| And it has made people very upset. | ||
| But my kids, I have always raised them, all of them. | ||
| We are not victims. | ||
| You will not be a victim. | ||
| So that's just my kind of perspective on this. | ||
| And I just wanted to share that again. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Brandy in Indianapolis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Brandy, thank you very much. | |
| You personify the tragedy of what we're discussing here. | ||
| The fact that you had to hire people who were less qualified and not hire people who met the qualifications is a tragedy. | ||
| It's a tragedy for all 330 million Americans. | ||
| We all benefit when the best people are doing their job. | ||
| When I go on a bridge or go in a tunnel, I want that tunnel and that bridge to have been drawn and erected by people, by architects and engineers who knew what they were doing. | ||
| In fact, if that weren't the case, I would not want to go on a bridge or in a tunnel. | ||
| Hopefully we can now go back to that kind of country. | ||
| With regards to the way you have raised your family, your children are extremely fortunate. | ||
| You raised them right. | ||
| And the point that you make about wanting to write who they were biracial and the school saying, no, that is a huge problem. | ||
| You know, when they say, no, no, because we're going to get all these benefits. | ||
| We don't want to live in that kind of country. | ||
| We don't want to live in that type of country. | ||
| I don't. | ||
| And I don't know anybody really, not anyone that I respect who says to me, oh, no, I do want things that I don't deserve because of my actions and hard work, but just merely because of a trait that I had nothing to do with that I was born with. | ||
| Who really, in the souls of their own bedroom, believes that. | ||
| So thank you very much for your call. | ||
| And thank you very much for sharing your experience, which is very revealing. | ||
| The president's latest executive order targets the Pentagon, particularly transgender military members of the Pentagon, saying this. | ||
| The order calls for the Pentagon to update updated policies on the medical standards required for military service. | ||
| It takes aim at transgender people in personal terms, accusing them of living in conflict with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life. | ||
| That was yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I didn't take a look at that. | |
| It's not an area that I look at. | ||
| Since I haven't read it, Pedro, I just wouldn't want to comment. | ||
| I do against race, I mean, sorry, sex-based preferential treatment or preferential treatment that is based on racial sexual preferences. | ||
| So I'm against that. | ||
| I just haven't read that order. | ||
| Well, I think to the extent then, if they're the best people for the job, say serving in the military, but they happen to be transgender, why not give them the opportunity? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know what he has done. | |
| What has he done? | ||
| It's CEO on transgender people to reconsider, ask calls for the Pentagon to reconsider how transgender people will be part of the military. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just haven't. | |
| Okay, I'd have to spend time thinking about that. | ||
| That's fair. | ||
| Naomi in Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I don't hear anyone talking about Donald Trump's father, Fred, who was renting apartments in the 50s and 60s, and even after that, in Queens. | ||
| And if a black family came to apply, even if they were qualified, they would put a C next to the name, which immediately disqualified them from being rented to, from having an apartment. | ||
| Now, Donald Trump's father did this for years, and he got away with it. | ||
| And nothing happened to him. | ||
| And no one said anything about him. | ||
| And blacks, this was actually replicated throughout the country in different ways. | ||
| And we're seeing now that this was happening. | ||
| And you better believe he taught this lesson to his son, that there are certain people you just don't allow them to get certain things. | ||
| Now, if DEI was around in those days, perhaps, perhaps they would have gotten some fair treatment. | ||
| So I'd like to know what your guest says about that. | ||
| That's Naomi and Maryland. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Naomi, thanks for your question. | |
| A fundamental principle of this country, but not just this country of any democracy, is that you're judged by your own actions. | ||
| I happen to delve into genealogy a lot. | ||
| It's one of my hobbies. | ||
| You know, thank God I'm not judged by the actions of some of my ancestors. | ||
| And that is true for every family tree there is. | ||
| You know, you're talking about, I don't know that what you're saying is true, but you're talking about his father, not the president himself. | ||
| You're saying that his father must have taught this, which I don't know that he did, to his son. | ||
| I don't know that and you don't know that. | ||
| So let's go back to the principle fundamental to democracy, that you're judged by your own actions. | ||
| You're held accountable for your own actions in the things you say, not for something an ancestor has said or done. | ||
| In the papers today, there's a story about Costco rejecting calls to eliminate their DEI programs. | ||
| I'm wondering how the president's actions and the government's actions, how that filters down perhaps into public companies and if there's going to be an impact there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, how long do you have, Pedro? | |
| 19 attorneys general have already written to Costco saying that they better make sure, the Costco board better make sure that it is not implementing anything that is illegal. | ||
| And again, as I said, preferential treatment quotas are illegal, not just because of the actions Donald Trump just took, but because of statutes and the Constitution. | ||
| Moreover, what we have seen in the last three years, really since the beginning of 2021, I follow this issue very closely, but especially in the last 12 months, it's a stampede by the Fortune 500 away from the, it is divisive. | ||
| It doesn't work. | ||
| Every study shows that it doesn't work. | ||
| So you have a long list, Meta, Ford, Boeing, McDonald's, Target, saying, no, we're not going to do this stuff anymore. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because they're responsible to their customers. | ||
| They're responsible to the shareholders. | ||
| They're responsible to the bottom line. | ||
| And Americans don't like this. | ||
| And so they walked away from it. | ||
| No, ran away from it. | ||
| In the last 12 months, we had a few holdouts. | ||
| Obviously, the biggest holdout was the federal government under Biden and Kamala Harris. | ||
| Now that's gone. | ||
| So what we have now are readouts in the academies, in some of the sports leagues. | ||
| I watch a lot of football, especially recently. | ||
| You see the football players with Andy's helmet reject hate or embrace love. | ||
| That is, Apparently, the commissioner of the NFL has bought into the lie that we're a hateful country, an oppressive country, where we have white supremacy as the operating principle, and we have systemic racism, and that we have hate as a fundamental bedrock value of this country. | ||
| So I think the NFL is a weather vein. | ||
| I expect they will run away from it now, too. | ||
| But no, the corporate world has abandoned this with alacrity. | ||
| Costco is a rare exception. | ||
| This is Larry. | ||
| Larry is from Florida, Democrats line for Mike Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, gentlemen. | |
| Good to be on your program this morning. | ||
| I just had two questions for the person on. | ||
| I wanted to know, does he know what DEI means? | ||
| Also, does he know what the word woke means? | ||
| And I'm talking about the definition as far as what it means as far as the black community is concerned and not as far as what it means for the white community. | ||
| And I'll take my question offline. | ||
| Y'all have a wonderful day. | ||
| Well, Larry, thank you for your call. | ||
| You're in a wonderful state. | ||
| I do know that woke is a term that comes from African Americans. | ||
| My concern with woke is not how it's defined in that way, but how it has been defined by the woke themselves. | ||
| And that is this idea that we must all be very awake to the fact that all of life must be looked at through the lens of an epic struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor. | ||
| That's come straight from the manifesto, by the way, the Communist Manifesto of 1848 by Karl Marx. | ||
| I reject that notion. | ||
| I reject, I rather embrace the gospel when it says we're no longer slaveholder. | ||
| So that is what woke means. | ||
| DEI, as I said, is the opposite of what the words should mean, have traditionally meant. | ||
| Diversity means racial quotas, unconstitutional, Larry. | ||
| Equity means the functional opposite of equality. | ||
| Equality is the principle mentioned in our founding documents. | ||
| Equity is illegal. | ||
| Equity, I'm talking about equity as defined by the people who do critical race theory, including Kamala Harris, who was always very clear about what she meant by equity. | ||
| Biden was never not a politician who dealt in these issues a lot until the last years of his life, until the last few years. | ||
| And again, inclusion is not about inclusion. | ||
| If I wear a t-shirt that says anything about God or Jesus to the Smithsonian, the guards may throw me out. | ||
| That's your inclusion. | ||
| That's the inclusion that I mean. | ||
| That's why I'm opposed to DEI. | ||
| So yeah, that's what these things mean, Larry. | ||
| Because the president took executive orders and the means to achieve this, Hakeem Jeffries had talked about possibly legal challenges. | ||
| What do you think of the level of legal challenges to these EOs might be? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They haven't happened yet, but I think obviously we're in an overly litigious country. | |
| These things will, some of them might end up in the courts. | ||
| Right now, the president has acted with such alacrity, with such strength, in executive order after executive order, in getting his cabinet passed. | ||
| Things have come so fast and have been so good that I think what we're seeing is a liberal side that is paralyzed. | ||
| They haven't reacted yet, really, in any way. | ||
| They don't know what their leaderless. | ||
| They don't know how to react. | ||
| But I expect that at some point in the near future, they will wake up from the stupor and try to do something. | ||
| From our Republican line, we will hear from Christine in Michigan. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I was just calling to say in the last few months, I have heard from people from the Heritage Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation is against Christianity. | ||
| They are against true Christianity. | ||
| And he is trying to put on Christians by them wearing a Christian symbol or a shirt or something with Jesus Christ or God on it. | ||
| When I see someone like that, I go up to them and I say, I know that verse. | ||
| It's one of my favorites. | ||
| And thank you for sharing Jesus with the world because we need true Christians. | ||
| This man, why can't Hakeem Jeffries be on there? | ||
| Okay, call her. | ||
| I'll stop because you can answer that, but I'll keep her on just in case she wants to clarify. | ||
| But go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was not, I don't think that I heard a question there. | |
| The Heritage Foundation has Catholics like me, has Protestants, have many, many Jewish colleagues that I work closely with. | ||
| We believe that religion has a place in public life. | ||
| We believe that democracy in this country is made for moral people, but we adhere to no single religion. | ||
| I'm not sure what the caller is saying or alleging. | ||
| This is Rudy in Georgia Democrats line. | ||
| We're running a little short on time, Rudy. | ||
| So go ahead and jump in with your question or comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
1973, I was a graduate from Bethune-Cutman College, which is HBCU. | |
| Arthur Fletcher was a keynote speaker. | ||
| He was the architecture of affirmative action for the Nixon administration. | ||
| He said that these corporations are hiring us because they do business with the government, not because they want you, even though you're qualified, is because the law won't allow them to discriminate. | ||
| And when I went to General Motors, there were 30 college graduates in my class that year from Purdue, Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State. | ||
| They had about five Afro-American students. | ||
| We were all qualified. | ||
| We were all highly educated. | ||
| And we were all successful. | ||
| Affirmative action stopped General Motors from excluding us. | ||
| They didn't hire us because we were black. | ||
| I never heard that, but I mean, that's a, if what I, if I heard correctly, yeah, that's awful. | ||
| If affirmative action stopped anybody from being hired because of their race. | ||
| And of course it did. | ||
| But I mean, that's, is that what he said? | ||
| I think that's what he implied. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, yeah, no, that's that's illegal. | ||
| Uh, as we wrap up, we've seen so much action specifically on this front on DEI. | ||
| Where could the administration go next, or do you think they've done all they can on that this issue? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I think that these are executive orders, and I'm very happy that these executive orders, this now has to be codified into law. | |
| We need to go a step further, make sure that, because a lot of what happened, I mean, what Trump did, the first thing he did is get rid of Biden's Executive Order 13985, which was one that put DEI throughout the federal government. | ||
| Just like Trump did that, like he rescinded 13985, the next president can come in and rescind all this activity, all these actions. | ||
| We need to codify them into law. | ||
| That's the next shoe that needs to drop. | ||
| At the Heritage Foundation's Mike Gonzalez joining us for this conversation. | ||
| He serves as a senior fellow. | ||
| Fun fact, in 30 seconds, it says that you were jailed overnight and expelled by Manuel Orton Oriaga. | ||
| That's right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My first foreign assignment in 1988. | |
| How did that happen? | ||
| For what reason? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was there as a journalist, and the hotel called me and said the police are here looking for you. | |
| I called my editor and said, What do I do? | ||
| Do I go to the American embassy? | ||
| He said, No, go back. | ||
| We'll get you out. | ||
| They arrested me, put me out of Marco Torrijos airport in the prison out of Marco Torrijos, where I spend the night, and then they put me on an Air Bolivian, Lloyd Bolivian flight back to Miami. | ||
| It made my career. | ||
| My editor thought it was hot stuff. | ||
| I went to Hong Kong the next year. | ||
| And from that point on, I didn't look back. | ||
| I spent 15 years overseas. | ||
| But yeah, no, it's kind of a fun fact about me. | ||
| Mike Gonzalez, thanks for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country. | ||
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