The Trump Administration is DEI for Incompetent Men

The Trump presidency isn't a horror movie. It's a jackass sequel.

There was a moment, early in the Trump presidency, when many of us made a critical mistake. We looked at the cruelty on display, the kidnapping of legal residents, the abortion bans, the dismantling of environmental protections, and assumed we were witnessing competence. Not moral competence, of course, but a kind of ruthless, calculating efficiency. We treated the administration like a well-oiled fascist machine, analyzing every tweet and press conference as if they were chess moves in some grand authoritarian strategy.

We were wrong.

What we were actually witnessing was something far more dumber: the elevation of mediocrity as a governing principle. The Trump White House isn’t some sinister cabal of geniuses. It’s a jobs program for the profoundly unqualified, a four-year experiment in what happens when you hand the keys of government to men who peaked in high school. Their only real qualification? The ability to coddle the most insecure man in America.

These aren’t masterminds. They’re the dumbest guys in the room, and that’s why they got promoted. Because their political project has never been about governing. It’s about preserving a system where men like them succeed not through talent, but through entitlement.

This is what patriarchy looks like in practice. It doesn’t just privilege men, it selects for the worst among them. The loudest, the angriest, the most insecure. It rewards obedience over insight, loyalty over leadership, ego over ethics. And while it absolutely hurts women, it also traps good men in a world where they are forced to answer to worse ones. A world where being thoughtful, decent, or competent makes you less likely, not more, to rise.

That’s the paradox at the heart of patriarchy: it promises men power, but only if they agree to give up everything that makes power worth having: integrity, growth, connection, purpose. It’s not just bad for women. It’s bad for men. And it’s terrible for democracy.

And no scandal reveals this better than signalgate, a blunder so humiliating it makes Veep look like a pbs documentary. Michael Waltz (the actual National Security Advisor) accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to a signal group chat discussing bombing Yemen.

Yes. A journalist. In a signal chat. About Yemen.

This isn’t just incompetence. It’s the kind of error that would get you fired from an unpaid internship. But because this is the White House, it gets you promoted.

And when that incompetence inevitably implodes, the women who helped elevate these men are often the first to fall. Just look at Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who is having a really bad 48 hours after trying to cover for the boys’ fiasco by claiming that “no classified or intelligence equities were included.” But her statement was quickly contradicted by multiple sources, including a U.S. defense official who confirmed the information was “highly sensitive” and resembled material typically briefed to the president in secure settings. And then in the world’s greatest this you? The Atlantic published he texts showing “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.” You can read their stupid texts for yourself here. And subscribe to The Atlantic while you’re at it.

The MAGA movement isn’t a rebellion against elitism. It’s a tantrum against merit—a last-ditch effort by underqualified men to hold onto power by discrediting any system that might measure their actual abilities. They didn’t kill DEI because it was unfair. They killed it because it worked. And because they’re scared they’ll lose positions they were never qualified to have in the first place.

Equity meant their résumés would finally be judged on merit. Inclusion meant they could be replaced by someone, god forbid a woman or person of color. Or at the very least, someone who doesn’t leave their venmo public, like our brilliant National Security Advisor just did.

And that’s their worst nightmare: a world where qualifications matter and their mistakes get noticed.

Strip away legacy admissions, nepotism, and the old boys’ club, and these men don’t rise. They disappear.

Of course the cruelty is real. But don’t mistake it for strategy. This administration doesn’t think three steps ahead. It doesn’t think one step ahead. There’s no grand design. Just spite, improv, and the emotional intelligence of a comment section on 4chan.

And here’s the thing: smart, competent men aren’t afraid of DEI. They don’t fear fair competition, they welcome it. Because they know they can rise on merit. They don’t need to rig the system, erase the résumé, or disqualify the playing field to win. Only insecure men demand a world where everyone else is held back so they can stay ahead.

So while I know this week’s news feels more dystopian than ever, it’s also your permission slip to unclench: the point isn’t that they’re good at authoritarianism. It’s that they’re bad at everything else. They will fail at fascism like they fail at everything else.

They’re not scary. They’re just loud. Loud and overpromoted. Loud and terrified that, in a real meritocracy, they’d be the first ones out of a job.

So don’t fear them.
Be insulted.
Be outraged.
Be smarter, because you already are.