I thought DJT was too smart for that. Are you certain?
I’m nowhere near as certain as I was sarcastic.
Apologies for not demarcating it as such.
And that’s where you went wrong. 
And of course hiring only sycophants shrinks the pool of potential candidates radically (especially if the sycophants must meet the ‘straight white Christian male’ standard).
Shrinking the pool of candidates is a real issue with air-traffic controllers. As has been mentioned in the thread, there have been persistent shortages of people willing (and able) to do the job.
A fair comment on the DEI versus shrunken-pools-of-candidates issue:
Of course all this goes completely over the heads of people like Hegseth, Duffy, and Vance (not to mention Donald himself).
Though the study is 20+ years old, I would argue that this is what DEI is really about:
We perform a field experiment to measure racial discrimination in the labor market. We respond with fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perception of race, each resume is assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase. Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries. Federal contractors and employers who list Equal Opportunity Employer’ in their ad discriminate as much as other employers. We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names. These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market.
It’s an effort to end the default presumption: that straight, white, cis, God-fearing males are competent while all others are presumed incompetent.
Think the US has changed dramatically since that study was conducted?
Not me.
“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
–The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (questionable attribution)
It seems like the main focus of MAGA is to bend it back.
We know what “cultural Marxism” is . . . THE JEWS.
Disagree. Preferential policies, whatever you call them, are a gift to authoritarian leaders, including Narendra Modi and Donald Trump. MAGAville will bring this up over and over, whether true or not, and even though they themselves sometimes did it, because their heads correctly tell them that this issue works for them politically.
Trump’s D.E.I. bashing will mitigate the approval polling hit he is likely to take from tariffs.
Oh, yes, that’s a strain that Donald is using to divide Americans (aside from the likelihood that he actually believes it, himself). “The Great Replacement Theory,” so far as I understand it, is based on Evil Jews planning to harm Real People (i.e. the aforementioned straight white Christians).
And it’s all tied in with turning “D.E.I.” into a snarl term.
No disagreement, since I never claimed that Donald wasn’t profiting by using D.E.I. as a scapegoat and means of peopling his government with sycophants. Of course he is profiting, and as you point out (basically), following the authoritarian playbook.
“D.E.I” has become far too useful a way of being quite openly racist/sexist/etc. without using the usual terminology of racism/sexism/etc., to ever be given up by the right-wing extremists in charge of our government.
Speaking of trouble getting air traffic controllers:
This story says that the parties reached a last-minute agreement that resolved the crisis:
https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/bay-area-airfield-near-sfo-escapes-air-traffic-20067800.php
Maybe Donald owns stock in Greyhound…? (Not that there weren’t ATC shortages before, as mentioned. But all the chaos about Loyalty Oaths and DEI and Trump-promises of buy-outs for those who resign and the firing of the FAA head because he objected to Elon blowing up rockets…that can’t be helping.)
Given the many things Donny has said about the Jews that are straight up anti-Semitic tropes there really can’t be any doubt that Trump is an anti-Semite.
Yes, that’s my strong impression, too.
(Of course his defenders always trot out ‘but his daughter married a Jew so he CAN’T be anti-Semitic’—as if that made any sense.)
So, a Bill Sponsored by a Republican- Sam Grave- and passed by a GOP House -is Bidens fault as he signed it?
And the bill had a WHOLE lot more than expanding slots at the DC airport.
Here is what is basically did- The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act of 2024 (Public Law 118-63) was signed into law on May 16, 2024. The bill reauthorizes the FAA for five years, through Fiscal Year 2028. Why would Joe Veto that?
However, the following things did occur during trumps administration- The Director of the FAA was fired. trump announced a hiring freeze on new controllers. The Aviation Advisor Safety Council was disbanded. Controllers- along with other Federal employees- offered a buyout.
Right.
Yep. And it was GOP sponsored.
Eggs were REALLY expensive, dontchaknow? 
More than the fact Joe signed a GOP bill with massive bipartisan support.
Also, ‘He has Jew lawyers and he hires Jews to handle his money so he CAN’T be anti-Semitic!’
As if those two things aren’t straight from Anti-Semitism for Dummies.
Absolutely.
It seems pretty clear that he was raised to be a bigot and, unsurprisingly, continued to be a bigot throughout the decades. People like that never re-think their assumptions.
I think Trump has gotten it into his head that EO’s can make things happen even when they can’t. Ditto memos and all those other sorts of short-form quick documents.
Bigots frequently distinguish between “their” [fill in the blank] and the run-of-the-mill all-those-other-[fill in the blank]. They’re still bigots.
The thing about Trump is that his sense of morality is so twisted that he’s actually a philosemitic bigot. He thinks that Jews hoard money and control Hollywood and are all loyal to Israel first and foremost, but he thinks those are good qualities about them and admires them for it.
I always think of those folks as Juror #10s.
Look, you know how these people lie! It’s born in them! I mean, what the heck? I don’t have to tell you! They don’t know what the truth is! And lemme tell ya: they don’t need any real big reason to kill someone, either! No sir! They get drunk! Oh, they’re real big drinkers, all of ‘em - you know that - and bang: someone’s lyin’ in the gutter! Oh, nobody’s blaming them for it. That’s the way they are, by nature! You know what I mean? Violent! Human life don’t mean as much to them as it does to us! Look, they’re lushing it up and fighting all the time and if somebody gets killed, so somebody gets killed! They don’t care!
Oh, sure, there are some good things about 'em, too! Look, I’m the first one to say that!
Turns out the “DEi” program Trump has been blaming for the crash was initiated during the presidency of (checks notes) Donald Trump.
Will Biden’s reign of terror in the sky never end?