John Ullyot, a former aide to Donald Trump, was scolded Sunday after he attacked Vice President Kamala Harris as a "DEI hire."
During a panel discussion on Newsmax, Ullyot claimed that former President Barack Obama was running a "monarchy" that would select the Democratic presidential nominee.
"Barack Obama, with his henchmen, his aides, have been running the show under President Biden, and now you've got a situation where it's really up to him who it's gonna be," Ullyot said. "But bottom line here is that it's gonna go to Kamala, if anybody, because she was a DEI hire."
"She was hired because President Biden said when he was a candidate that he wanted to hire a woman to be his number two, and then after the BLM riots, then he got a lot of pressure to have a Black woman from a lot of Black women's groups, and he did that," he added.
Newsmax host Sarah Williamson and Democratic columnist Ellis Henican condemned Ullyot's remarks.
"Okay, the DEI thing I strongly disagree with here, but this is not my place to have the disagreement," Williamson said.
"Yeah," Henican agreed. "You shouldn't talk, John, you shouldn't talk like that. It makes you sound like a racist. Don't talk like that."
"Look, it's the party that embraces DEI," Ullyot replied. "Those are the guys that put identity above qualifications."
"Don't talk like that," Henican insisted. "In the end, the reality is that whichever one of these candidates is being focused on, that's who's in trouble."
"So this week, it's been Biden," he continued. "He had a rotten debate performance. But next week, Trump will say something like, oh, maybe we should execute the daughter of the former Republican vice president."
Over the weekend, Fox News contributor Charlie Gasparino also attributed Harris's vice presidency to Diversity Equity and Inclusion policies.
"The American public may soon be subjected to DEI writ large in the next president of the United States, if Kamala Harris finds her way to the top of the Democratic ticket while Joe Biden wilts away as the party’s presidential nominee after his horrific debate performance," Gasparino wrote for the New York Post.
