Donald Trump has been carrying through on his campaign promise to rid the government of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, but his own businesses and books have highlighted the importance of those initiatives.
Corporate governance documents for Trump Media, which owns the Truth Social platform, pledged as recently as last year to foster a “culture of diversity and inclusion” before the company went public, and the president's books on business have also promoted diversity in hiring, reported CNN.
“Anyone who really knows me knows that I hate intolerance and bigotry,” Trump said in his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve.”
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Trump, who was considering a presidential run at the time, claimed that through his friendship with Black celebrities like Sean “Diddy” Combs and Sammy Sosa he learned "firsthand about the diversity of American culture, and it has left me with little appetite for those who hate or preach intolerance.”
His media company's board pledged in its governing documents to commit to "grow and improve with a diverse Board, management, and team of employees," and they said that would be a factor in nominations for the company's leadership.
“Additionally, the Board believes in and supports equal opportunity in employment to all persons and strongly encourages management to embrace the unique contributions an employee or candidate can bring to the Company and its culture in terms of their education, opinions, culture, ethnicity, race, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, nationality, color, religion, veteran’s status, disability and other life experiences,” those documents state.
A spokesperson for Trump Media & Technology Group told CNN that statements about diversity and inclusion in corporate governance documents were boilerplate legal language to to comply with anti-discrimination laws.
“CNN’s focus on legal language that is obviously intended to ban discrimination and ensure compliance with all applicable regulations is a textbook example of CNN preferring frivolous, partisan ‘gotcha’ stories to meaningful news that affects people’s lives,” the spokesperson said.
The White House also commented on the record with an attack on DEI policies.
“The Left’s divisive focus on DEI policies undermines decades of progress toward true equality," said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman. "The Trump administration rejects this backward thinking and will pursue an agenda that lifts everyone up with the chance to achieve the American Dream."
However, legal experts told CNN that Trump Media's claims are nonsense.
“There is no law requiring an affirmative public statement," said CNN legal analyst Elie Honig.
Companies must comply with anti-discrimination laws, Honig said, but they're not required to make public statements affirming commitments to diversity, and another expert says the statements go beyond non-discrimination by explicitly describing diversity as a factor in hiring and board nominations.
“The defense that this statement is only about a ban on discrimination and compliance with the law strains credulity,” said Kenji Yoshino, a New York University constitutional law professor. “The ‘commitment to diversity and inclusion’ section states that this commitment ‘is and will be a factor in identifying and nominating director candidates at both the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee and Board levels.’ This sounds less like non-discrimination and more like traditional affirmative action.”
