President Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on Jan. 23, including one resurrecting a policy that prohibits foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive federal funding from performing or promoting abortion services through their work in other countries. (Credit: Ron Sachs/pool photo via Bloomberg News)
For Cabinet: 16 White Men, 4 Women, 1 Black Man
“In his first two weeks, President Trump has sought to project the image of a new leader moving quickly to enact his agenda,” David Nakamura and Abby Phillip reported Sunday for the Washington Post.
“He has surrounded himself in photo ops with his most trusted senior aides as he signs a flurry of executive orders, visits government agencies and calls world leaders from the Oval Office.
“But if the images from the White House aim to show a man of action, they also have delivered another, unspoken message in the early days of the new administration: Most of the aides Trump relies on for counsel as he moves to dramatically reshape the country are men — and nearly all of them are white.
“It is a sharp change from the past eight years of the barrier-breaking Obama administration, and one that has reinforced the feeling among Trump’s critics that a narrow, anachronistic worldview is driving an agenda that they consider to be hostile to women and minorities. . . .”
Nakamura and Phillip also wrote that “after millions of women had demonstrated against his administration in marches in Washington and across the country, Trump presided over a swearing-in ceremony for two dozen senior White House staffers. Among them were five women and one racial minority, former ‘Apprentice’ star Omarosa Manigault, who is serving as a senior communications aide.
“Beyond the White House, Trump’s choices to fill 21 Cabinet-level positions include 16 white men, four women (including two Asian Americans) and one African American man, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
“For the first time since the Reagan administration, there are no Latinos, even as Trump moves to ramp up the deportations of undocumented immigrants. . . .”
Meanwhile, Andrew Kaczynski reported Monday for CNN, “Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, said during a 2010 webinar for Tea Party activists that liberal Democrats have a ‘plantation mentality’ towards African Americans to keep them under government control.
“Bannon, the former Breitbart executive who has now emerged as one the most influential advisers inside Trump’s White House, described a ‘victimology’ among African Americans created by the welfare state, which caused them to attack black conservatives.
“After listing off several prominent black conservatives, Bannon said, ‘These people are heroes. They take an incredible, incredible amount of grief because the welfare state has built in this victimology. And the elitist, liberal, progressives have a plantation mentality that they don’t think African Americans should be out of government control.’ .
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