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DEROY MURDOCK: Biden’s Commitment To The Church Of Diversity Has Saddled Us With Inept, Unqualified Officials

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Deroy Murdock Contributor
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Washington’s two biggest stories last week — are beyond embarrassing. President Joe Biden’s widespread abuse of government secrets and the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) first grounding of domestic flights in 21 years illustrate the perils of identity politics at America’s commanding heights.

The White House confessed that Biden’s lawyers discovered unsecured top-secret documents in at least three places: A closet at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, a reputed think tank; the library of Biden’s Delaware mansion, and — the finest comedy writers could not concoct this — inside that home’s garage, beside Biden’s little green Corvette.

Team Biden wants Americans to believe that sensitive documents about Iran, Ukraine and the United Kingdom were all perfectly secure, perhaps nestled between the snow tires and cans of brake fluid. (RELATED: DAVID HARSANYI: Are The Walls Closing In On Joe Biden?)

Facing the toughest questions ever posed to her from non-Fox News journalists, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre withered worse than usual. She evaded and dodged virtually every query on Garagegate.

KJP asserted that Biden “takes classified documents and information very seriously…very seriously…very seriously…” Like a Stepford Wife with a fried circuit board, KJP invoked the “very seriously” defense 15 times during Thursday afternoon’s press briefing. Millions of Americans buckled in derisive laughter.

The Sideshow Bob lookalike’s performance was the most pathetic since Team Nixon created the “modified limited hangout” to drown inconvenient truths about Watergate in clouds of squid ink.

In another humiliation, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg flailed as a faulty line of code in an FAA program forced a nationwide aviation ground stop on Wednesday morning. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, struggled to explain what went awry and, of course, took no responsibility for this colossal failure.

He should have apologized for wasting his department’s time and the American taxpayers’ dollars to battle “racist roads” and neuter the FAA’s traditional pilot advisory from “Notice to Airmen” to “Notice to Air Missions.”

God knows, the real risk to the flying public was the gender-biased title of an oft-updated FAA safety report.

Now that the testosterone has been squeezed from these announcements — at long last! — passengers can jet across America with no worry greater than whether the stewards and stewardesses will offer Pinot Noir or merely Cabernet Sauvignon.

All seriousness aside, critics “relentlessly mocked” the Alfred E. Newman doppelganger for the airline ground stop, the latest float in Buttigieg’s slow parade of epic fails.

“Pete Buttigieg couldn’t organize a one-car funeral,” Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton laughed via Twitter. “He was never remotely qualified for this role.”

“All flights in America are grounded because of an FAA computer error,” Texas Republican Congressman Troy Nehls observed via Twitter. “Is Pete Buttigieg on vacation again?”

Buttigieg cemented his reputation for sloth when he took a one-month paternity break in August 2021, amid that year’s supply-chain meltdown. Also, last Sept. 1, while a national rail strike loomed, Buttigieg posted a video on Twitter that appeared to show him at a U.S. airport. In fact, he was vacationing in Portugal.

Aside from these matching, hers and his, high-profile belly flops, what else do these two have in common?

KJP and Buttigieg won Left-wing plaudits as key diversity hires in an Administration that just can’t get enough identity politics. Jean-Pierre was cheered from the White House podium as the first black, openly gay person to serve as top presidential mouthpiece.

Likewise, Democrats waved their pom poms for Buttigieg, supposedly, America’s first self-proclaimed gay Cabinet secretary. Republicans quickly exposed this resume inflation: President Donald J. Trump’s Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell already earned this distinction. Naturally, the Left could not grant the evil “DonaldTrump” credit for making such a groundbreaking appointment.

After this pesky fact was shot and buried, the Left’s hosannas for Buttigieg roared ahead. Buttigieg “shattered a centuries-old political barrier with overwhelming bipartisan support, and that paves the way for more LGBTQ Americans to pursue high-profile appointments,” one former official crowed like a cock.

Not so fast.

Last week’s events, and how these two mishandled them, sloppily delineated the deep-seated problem with identity politics. KJP’s and Buttigieg’s obvious ineptness instantly repeated this question: “Are they in their posts thanks to their talents or merely to help Biden check off a few political boxes and please multiple factions of his base?”

If KJP and Buttigieg each were doing a heckuva job, no one would care about these factors.

But the blazing haplessness of these duds could impede qualified gay Americans who merely wish to be hired for their superior job records — wherever they might sit astride the gender and sexuality rainbow.

Team Biden values demographics above ability.

It officially ballyhooed Alejandro Mayorkas as “the first Latino and immigrant confirmed to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security.” He relentlessly lies that “the border is closed,” even under oath before Congress.

Perjury charges, anyone?

Mayorkas also slandered perfectly innocent mounted Border Patrol agents. He falsely accused these federal officers of using their horses’ stirrups to flog Haitian illegal aliens as they invaded America via the Rio Grande. Although this was thoroughly debunked, Mayorkas kept defaming and disciplining these officials. Despite this malfeasance, the oh-so diverse Mayorkas continues his reign of error at DHS.

Biden personally pledged to nominate America’s first black female to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill Justice Stephen Breyer’s vacated seat. Biden kept his word and named Ketanji Brown Jackson to the post.

This perhaps unfairly led critics to question whether KBJ were prepared for that role (her far-Left jurisprudence notwithstanding) or if she merely filled another politically priceless niche.

In a March 2020 Democrat presidential primary debate, Biden publicly declared that he “would pick a woman to be my vice president.” All hail Biden’s spare: Kamala Harris.

Biden’s communion in the Church of Diversity is reflected across his administration.

By contrast, President Trump largely avoided identity politics. He named John Ullyot as Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs in March 2017 and appointed him chief spokesman for the National Security Council in October 2019.

Trump never mentioned that he made Ullyot, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, one of the highest-ranking gay officials in history — Republican or Democrat. Trump just called Ullyot the best qualified candidate for the job.

And, even when the Washington Post’s three-time plagiarist Lisa Rein cooked up a phony controversy over the VA’s response to the August 2017 Charlottesville race riot, Trump never tried to refute this disinformation by deploying Ullyot’s status as the VA’s highest-ever-ranked gay appointee.

Biden and his team disserve so many of his appointees by stressing their identities over their abilities. This too often raises the question: Can these people do their jobs, or are they here just to be “firsts.”

Biden’s shopworn identity card wounds Karine Jean-Pierre and Pete Buttigieg by unmasking them as demographic giants and managerial midgets.

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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