When President Donald Trump blamed the hiring of disabled FAA employees for a midair crash in Washington, D.C., between a passenger jet and a military helicopter, he didn’t convince me (or most liberals) that diversity results in poor performance, but he sure did unwittingly reveal the underpinnings of the conservative push against diversity hiring and DEI initiatives.

We must acknowledge that Trump, speaking off the cuff and rapidly pivoting from fake eulogizing in the “hour of anguish” in which he was addressing the nation, was in completely over his head.

Other than the condolences obviously written by someone else who has an empathetic bone in their body, Trump’s prepared remarks mostly just blamed the crash on the previous Democratic administrations (skipping over the four years in which he recently held office). He’d apparently spent a few minutes skimming a FOX News article before he took to the dais, because he used several buzzwords from the piece — going back repeatedly to the phrase “severe intellectual disabilities,” for example.

Therefore, it wasn’t entirely unexpected when he accidentally tipped his hand. The truth popped out while he was ranting about a FAA diversity initiative to recruit applicants (applicants, that is, who he failed to mention would have to meet rigorous standards before becoming air traffic controllers) with disabilities.

“The (diversity) initiative is part of the FAA’s Diversity and Inclusion hiring plan,” Trump said, “which says diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think it’s just the opposite.”

Just the opposite? So, diversity hurts the FAA’s mission?

This time, he said what he meant instead of using the typical mumbo-jumbo, the euphemisms and the dog whistles.

Oops.

What Trump said reveals that at the crux of every Republican pushback to DEI is a firm belief that diversity makes companies and organizations worse.

Despite all their Bill of Rights crusading, conservatives don’t truly care whether qualified candidates are being discriminated against based on their skin color or gender. What they actually care about is their belief that minorities, women, the disabled, the elderly, LGBT folks — well, there’s no other way to say it: They think they’re worse at their jobs than white, healthy, young, straight men are.

Similar feelings were revealed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during his confirmation hearings. He was asked about whether he would stand in the way of women serving in combat roles.

As long as they weren’t lowering the standards for women, he answered, and as long as the military wasn’t further degraded by their presence. He’d previously said that women were making the military worse instead of better, but he now says he’s willing to reconsider under the right circumstances.

Women are a problem. Change my mind, he seemed to be saying.

The truth, though, is that women, minorities, the disabled and LGBT people are not to blame for poor performance or low standards. The fault for those, particularly in the military and in the FAA, is much more safely laid at the feet of vicious cutbacks — cutbacks like the federal spending freeze that Trump put into place recently and cutbacks like the rapacious corporate shellacking that tycoons like Elon Musk love to use to boost stock prices.

Now it’s critical to point out that we don’t know what caused the crash in D.C.

The investigation hasn’t concluded but consider this: The tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., was in charge of the area where the accident took place had been understaffed for years, according to The Washington Post. They only employed 63% of the air traffic controllers that they needed to function properly. The tower was understaffed at the time of the crash. Staffing, the Post said, has been difficult with cutbacks and turnover, which can be directly related to burnout.

Similarly, the military is also extremely short-staffed. In 2023, the U.S. military fell 41,000 people short of its recruitment goal. The active-duty Army is the smallest it’s been since 1940, when the U.S. population was 202 million less.

But despite annual military budget spending hikes, salaries and benefits for the average soldier, for example, remain pathetically low. As of 2025, the base pay for an Army private was $21,420 a year. Staff sergeants usually make $33,292. In Illinois, the state where I live, if you work a minimum-wage job for 40 hours a week, you’ll make $31,200 a year, and no one will send you to a war zone to get shot. Is there any wonder the military is having trouble recruiting?

Neither the FAA nor the military are in any place to be turning away qualified candidates, yet conservatives seem to think they’re both hotspots for able-bodied white male rejection. The truth, that degradation in both areas is more likely the result of conservative cost-cutting policies, is impossible for them to grasp.

When something bad happens, they blame DEI. They blame the disabled. They blame women. They blame minorities.

Instead, though, they should blame themselves, and the country they helped create — a country that doesn’t hire enough people to do the jobs that need to be done and then doesn’t treat the ones they do hire well enough to keep them.

If you want to truly make America great again, you should start with the American workforce, which will perform to greatness when it is provided with the resources and the treatment greatness requires.

How’s that for a performance improvement plan?

EDITOR’S NOTE: To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.