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On to South Carolina.

Former President Trump calls former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley a birdbrain and impostor and falsely questions her immigration status, all for staying in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Then, is promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.

Or D-E-I on the way out.

(MUSIC) Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe' Welcome To to the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

Up first, after a better showing than expected, but a loss in New Hampshire, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley said it's not over.

Former President Trump attacked her clothes, her intelligence and lied about her just because she wanted to stay in the race.

Some analysts, including former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, point out a former president winning by low double digits shows he's the weaker candidate and she won 60% of independents who are supposed to decide the general election.

Joining us today are D.C.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, former New York GOP Congresswoman Nan Hayworth.

Erin Matson of ReproAction and political strategist Rina Shah.

So, Nan, how do you think Trump is doing for the party and do you think I mean, we we all know he attacks anything and everybody, but is there any sexist or racist element to his attacks attacking?

She was born in the United States.

Nikki Haley.

And.

Parents were immigrants, but calling her, he made up some lie about her immigration status.

There was somebody had written something.

I don't remember.

I glanced at it because Nikki Haley's parents were immigrants, that she violated that her birth with, which I completely disagree, by the way, but violates the natural born American provisions in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

I don't espouse it, but I imagine President Trump was quoting that I wouldn't go there.

President Trump does well when he is statesmanlike and when he can discipline himself.

I know him personally to be a compassionate man.

I know also very well he is neither sexist nor racist.

He's going he plays one on television.

Well, no, I'm not.

But he doesn't, in fact.

But he's going after Nikki Haley because she is his opponent and he's, in fact, not treating her with kid gloves, which could be seen as something egalitarian.

So, no, that's not it.

It's just because she's she's just that.

Rina, your thoughts.

What do you think about her staying in the race?

How long do you think she'll stay in the race?

And what about the fact that she won 60% of independents in New Hampshire and in Iowa?

He only got something like 3% of the Republican vote because turnout was so low.

But still Those are incredible questions, Bonnie, talking about sort of the the mechanics of this race and look, the primary structure of this GOP primary has has made it tough for Nikki Haley, though she is the last one standing.

There is an uphill battle for her after New Hampshire.

But one thing ought to be addressed.

And right on its face, I'm not really sure why this is so tough for many people to just simply say she was born in Bamberg, South Carolina.

Nikki Haley's birthplace was Bamberg, South Carolina.

She is eligible to be president of the United States.

And that should never be called into question.

I just simply because her parents were not citizens at the time of her birth doesn't mean anything.

This is shocking to me that people have allowed this to go unchecked in many places.

I'm not saying this show or on this network, but I am saying that the fact that the former president can stand in front of a podium and say something so despicable is just hurts my heart because the Republican Party I joined at the age of 18, what was once known as the anti-slavery party would never question the eligibility of a full American citizen to be president of the United States.

This is not because he's desperate or, of course.

Keeping a harder time because of this.

And and a female.

Why would you ever say something that is absolutely false to call into question something so trite?

Why else about.

Everything and everybody?

So now.

Is it worse for her?

I think it's worse for him because I think logical, practical thinking Americans would say, why is he doing something like this?

Why has he been calling it into question?

But it opens up the door to say maybe it's because he's threatened by his opponent.

Right.

And then maybe he feels he can do it because she's a female.

I don't want to bring her color into this.

I don't like it.

I don't like to go there.

But one thing I will say, she is the most credible, qualified woman that I have seen come out of the Republican Party in so long.

And I am not endorsing her.

I have not endorsed her.

In fact, she performs so well in debates one through three, that she grabbed the attention of the people with money and power.

And if that doesn't tell you what American women still have to do in 2024, then there's no better story I can tell you.

It's the fact that she was she was looked at because of her merit, despite all these other things she brought to the table, having been a really well-liked, successful governor in many measures, this was the fact she had to break out of the pack to show she could perform, to be given the nod, to be given the money.

And so she still has money in the coffers.

That's why she's got longevity right now.

She's got desire.

She's got stamina.

She's made a number of missteps.

Of course, she's human.

She's a mom.

She's a military wife.

And again, it cannot be overstated the fact that you've got what I feel is a mentally unstable, pathologically lying former president that the Republican Party should be done with that still is able to give her a run for her money highlights the very fact that we American women still face a great number of paddles when it comes to being in the public sphere.

And I look forward to these walls being torn down by her and I look forward to her continuing in this race so long as possible for her, despite the math, not looking great, despite the polls telling her whatever it may be.

But Super Tuesday, if she doesn't perform well there in many of those winner takes all races, then it becomes statistically impossible for her to go forward.

But right now, don't put her in the corner.

She shouldn't be counted out.

Eleanor, your thoughts on the shape of the Democratic Party right now and President Biden's plan and chances for reelection?

Well, I think the economy is doing well.

And so the president is doing very well.

And I would predict that he will again when a term and be a second term president.

He's got all of the numbers going for him in the economy.

I and on the issues.

So I am not concerned about Democrats in the next race.

Interesting.

Do you think there will be pick ups?

You think the Democrats might take the House back?

I think we have a very good chance.

Remember, the Republicans only hold the House by about two or three votes.

If the president continues to be as strong as he is, I think he will take us back with him to control the House.

And your thoughts, Erin.

Bonnie, I think the most important thing to remember about Donald Trump is that he has proven time and again over and over every single day that he is not suited to be president of the United States, that he does not have the mental competency to do it, that he does not have the emotional.

He doesn't even seem to like the American people, let me put it that way, that he clearly has so much hate and malice in his heart that is driving so much of what he's doing.

Well, more confusing to listen to than he was four years ago.

I don't think anybody is serious that thinking, Gosh, President Trump is in the early stages of dementia.

But any public figure, especially one for this office, has got to be scrutinized.

And I think it's very apparent that the Democratic Party has much more of a challenge with with Joseph Robinette Biden.

The reality is, is we've got an octogenarian and a guy who's just three years his junior.

And I don't mean to be ageist It's funny, you know, I was raised up in a culture to respect my elders.

It's what I do every day of the week.

You know, it is it is a problem to me, though, when we've got the average retirement age, coast to coast, anywhere between 61 and 67 and the average life expectancy for an American male is 73.5 years old.

I have been told that the Democrats have really outgunned Republicans on organization and get out the vote, meaning they have they have really sto strong college Democrat clubs across the country.

And even though there's all this talk about young people deserting the Democrats because of not doing enough on climate change or because of the war in Gaza, between Gaza and Israel, there is really they're going to do very well with young people.

Do you agree with that?

Do you see that?

I think they're going to do well with young people.

We see some we see some weakness there.

But the campaign is only now beginning.

And I think the president has a lot of time to shore up his standing with young people, particularly when you compare him with Trump.

So I do believe there's time and I believe it will happen when you consider what the opposition is.

And when you take into Rina's point about fear of of Biden having memory issues, do you think that the public and public polls have shown that Americans do not want a rematch from two guys this old?

They really don't.

On the other hand, while Biden may have recall issues, serious recall issues, some would say the his administer has not been the flame throwing, catastrophic, you know, calling foreign leaders Rocket Man and creating all kinds of, you know, turning our our friends, our international allies against us and on and on and on.

It hasn't been the chaos that it was.

We're in two wars.

We're in two wars.

Well, that's true.

But I mean, you still there hasn't been a change of policy on that.

There there it decisions are made.

And I'm sure right now the Biden folks and Anthony Blinken at State are really pushing Israel hard even to the point of telling them we could cut them off financially and we give them billions of dollars in aid every year.

So do we to the Palestinians.

And billions of dollars of capital flows to the Iranian theocracy as.

well.

I'm just saying that there is a steadiness to this administration, which is normal, which is how most administrations act, whereas it felt like for four years when Trump was in power, whether you liked his policies or not, you felt like the country was in chaos.

And of course, it ended with the with January six, then the invasion of the Capitol building and destruction of American people's artworks and property and historic items in the capital.

So you don't see that and you're not going to see that under just.

About what we saw, riots.

We saw riots in major cities throughout the country in the summer of 2020, primarily in democratic jurisdictions.

Yeah.

You've got me on that one.

I must say.

What happened at the Portland Court house, which is a federal building, you didn't see the riots in front of the White House.

Those were those were not Trump supporters doing that.

Erin, your thoughts?

I mean, Bonnie, I don't think we need to engage in a round of what about ism?

It's very clear who Donald Trump is and what a presidency from him would mean.

He has said he intends to be a dictator on day one.

He tried to overthrow our government once already.

He surrounds himself with people while he fires all of them constantly.

And no one comes out looking good.

Even people who are considered to be a principal to play in his sandbox, we know that it would be an unmitigated disaster to have him anywhere near the levers of power again.

So I think that's very clear.

And yet we.

Had peace and prosperity.

COVID was admittedly a disaster for the entire world.

But during the three years in which President Trump did not have COVID to deal with a global pandemic, that was brand new, and we can certainly argue about the ways in which things were handled by members of both parties.

But we had peace and prosperity.

We were headed towards the Abraham Accords in the Middle East in unprecedented development.

We got involved in no wars.

Every demographic in this country did better every year.

Alienated the families.

We alienated the North Koreans.

Not that we're friends with them anyway, but we.

No more, no more, then Biden.

No more way to to purposely annoy countries we really didn't have to create create problems with at all.

But anyway.

And yet we and yet we and yet we managed to collaborate with them and President Trump was exactly right about a lot of the things that he was ridiculed.

For, from presidential politics to diversity, corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programs maybe on the way out.

Supporters say such initiatives are crucial for hiring and retaining people of color.

But critics claim some programs may unfairly exclude whites and Asians from the best colleges and jobs.

The backlash has led some companies to reevaluate and scale back DEI.

Some diversity advisers suggest the pushback has prompted a more discreet approach to DEI, such as diversity task forces.

There are more than 30 state bills nationwide targeting DTI funding practices and promotion at schools.

Eleanor, your thoughts?

I remember in the eighties covering the Supreme Court when the court did away with school bussing and several other important remedies that were put in for discrimination and race discrimination.

And everybody said, my God, it's going to end.

You know, we'll have no black school kids going to the best schools.

We'll have, you know, and all the advances that have been set in place will be done away with.

And are they going to say that when DEI or if DEI is done away with?

Yes, but but I think that there are other ways to indicate race.

And I expect those ways to be used.

You can you can look at the address.

You can talk about issues.

You can look at the school.

So there will be any number of ways to make sure there is race consciousness in in admissions.

And I expect those ways to be used by universities across the country.

I presume you're referring to, for example, this is not just not just in education, but also in jobs in the corporate world.

Exactly.

But I'm assuming you're talking in school applications that the Supreme Court recently said that race cannot be a factor anymore.

But kids are talking about it in their application essays.

So it's pretty easy to spot doing it on purpose, obviously.

So it's pretty easy, pretty easy to spot who came from disadvantaged backgrounds.

What about corporate jobs?

There have been certainly corporate diversity efforts, some .

Not what it eventually became and what it needed to become on a much wider scale.

But there were efforts to certainly diversify newsrooms.

When I was getting out of grad school in 75, that's 50 years ago.

So how long do you think these programs need to go on?

Until there is there is equality in all industries.

Your industry, as you say, has a long way to go.

And I think that you will see these methods used in corporate America just as they were used in education.

So you don't see companies pulling back on DEI programs?

Not much, because there there are a lot of ways to go at that issue.

Yeah, there's going to be a real rethinking of what DEI even is in the private sector.

And you're seeing the backlash right immediately, almost.

Just this month, when Harvard President Claudine Gay stepped down shortest tenure at Harvard University as president, she was its 30th president.

You know, she testified before Congress, said some things that I think were ill advised.

I think she should have had a coms expert versus lawyers advising her, probably.

But I think, for example.

All four of those Ivy League university presidents who testified before Congress.

That was a train wreck to watch.

But but it did open the door to kind of why Claudine Gay got her job.

But the one part that I think is most interesting is that Claudine Gay kind of came from the world that a lot of Harvard students come from.

She was the daughter of, I believe, two physicians.

At least one was a physician.

Yes, she was black.

Yes.

She has a background that was ethnic, racial, racially diverse.

But what we ought to be looking for is ideological diversity.

And that, you know, this is a teachable moment.

Economic diversity.

Socioeconomic, because I am just as concerned about the black kid coming from the ghetto as I am about the White kid coming from the holler.

I remember encountering when I first got to Congress for my my first job, I remember I kept getting passed over multiple times.

I got so many no's and so many times, and I can count at least three examples.

I remember out of five, we gave it to a donor's daughter.

We gave it to a donor son, and that it will last until that.

That happens in corporate America.

I can tell you right now that a lot of the people up in the upper echelons of it are not particularly smart, but they're getting there either because of efforts to say we need another black person, we need another brown person, we need another woman, we need another younger woman, perhaps.

All these things are you know, they are tough to talk about.

Erin, your thoughts on DEI.

Do we still need it?

Yes, we do, Bonnie.

I mean, the fact of the matter is that we still have an incredibly unequal society with a racial stratification driving a lot of that.

And what we see talk about the business sector.

We know we see data that companies that have more diverse boards, companies that have more diverse leadership, they tend to do better.

So it's a it's a bottom line boost as well.

And so I think, you know, we will see in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action, of course, that detailed higher education and affirmative action.

But we have already seen that the companies.

Are getting.

Guidance from lawyers, etc., to think a rethink how they are implementing their DEI programs.

And but I am also seeing, you know, the vast majority of CEOs seem to still be committed to the work.

It's just a question of how they go about it.

And I think that's a good thing.

And I also was really heartened after that horrible Supreme Court decision, which I vehemently disagreed with, to see that there was an overwhelming response from the university community rejecting that decision and vowing to press forward to ensure that they have diverse student pools and that they'll, you know, work to ensure that that happens going forward.

It benefits everyone to have diversity.

And so we may see the mechanics change, but let's keep doing it.

And Nan going out.

I have one question for you related to all this, but not on point.

The so-called angry white men, mainly non-college educated, mainly working class who support Donald Trump, would they be there?

Would they be so angry?

But for DEI and efforts that American leaders have made now for almost half a century to get women up, up the corporate ladder, up the educational ladder, and to get people of color there as well?

I think there's there are a lot of angry Americans in general.

Frankly, I meet more angry women than men, quite honestly, I, I think that's a facile and insulting characterization of of white men in this country of.

I certainly didn't mean to to insult anybody.

But the fact is, they are there.

And it's very easy to look at a demographic that feels left out in some ways.

I think that we have at this point an education government complex.

Not everybody needs to go to four year college.

And I think that the trades and vocations have been left out.

And I think it's wonderful to have diversity.

I'm the daughter of an immigrant.

We need that and it is a strength for us.

We need simply to at this point enforce the concept of merit.

And I think what was offensive about President Gay was that objectively, she did not merit the position that she was given.

I think a lot of the I in DEI is ideology, and I think President Gay ideologically to a point that Rina made, you know, was a great fit with what the Harvard Corporation seemed to want.

And she, you know, go along with with their ideological predilections, the public school model and I'm a public school product prior to my obviously private higher higher education.

But the public school model has been ruined in this country by, I'm sorry to say it, but by unionization of workforce that has become effectively the extortion division for the Democratic Party.

That needs to change.

We need to empower communities and parents.

We need to bring back the the classical liberal arts in the best possible sense.

And it is being done at the grassroots around this country.

Charter schools are succeeding where public schools have failed, and particularly in communities of greatest need socioeconomically and in terms of race and ethnicity.

And that's.

Right.

That's that's all that we're out of time at this point.

Thank you all so much.

Much appreciated That's it for this edition.

Keep the conversation going on our host of social media platforms reach out to us at to the country and visit our website, the address on the bottom of the screen.

And whether you agree or think to the contrary.

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