Candidate Donald Trump assured voters last August they could always trust him to keep his word. “In this journey, I will never lie to you. I will never tell you something I do not believe.” Contrasting himself to his opponent, he lamented “sometimes I can be too honest.”
But President-elect Donald Trump, a day before taking the oath of office, has already broken a key campaign pledge.
In an April 2016 on-the-record telephone interview with Newsday’s editorial board, Trump made it clear that he would have a diverse cabinet that would “look like America.”
Rita Ciolli, editorial page editor, asked him point-blank. “We’re trying to get a sense, would your cabinet look like America? Will there be women in there, blacks and Hispanics?”
“Oh absolutely,” Trump replied. “It’s so important.”
But Trump, who claimed to “love Hispanics,” said he has a “great relationship with the blacks [sic],” and boasted of hiring “tremendous numbers of women” in high ranking positions, has created a cabinet just two women, one African American, and zero Hispanics. Two more women have also been tapped for positions that are considered “cabinet level.”
Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! https://t.co/ufoTeQd8yA pic.twitter.com/k01Mc6CuDI
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2016
On Wednesday, NBC News reported that Trump transition officials say former Gov. Sonny Perdue (R-GA) is Trump’s choice to be secretary of agriculture. Perdue, a non-Hispanic white male, would fill the final untapped position in Trump’s initial cabinet.
Though white men make up just about 31 percent of Americans, if the senate confirms all of Trump’s choices, his cabinet would include white males in charge of the departments of state, treasury, defense, justice, interior, agriculture, commerce, labor, health, energy, veterans affairs, and homeland security. By contrast, President Obama’s initial cabinet won praise as the “most diverse in history.”
Asked about the lack of Hispanic cabinet appointees on Thursday, Trump spokesman Sean Spicer dismissed the concerns, tokenizing UN Ambassador-designate Nikki Haley and cabinet secretary-nominees Ben Carson and Elaine Chao to claim that the “totality of the diversity” is “second to none.” He also downplayed the value of racial and ethnic diversity, defending the diversity in “thinking and diversity of ideology.”
This post has been updated to include Spicer’s comments.