Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., blasted Kamala Harris in a social media post Monday, calling her a “DEI vice president,” using the initialism for “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs.
"The media propped up this president, lied to the American people for three years, and then dumped him for our DEI vice president," Burchett said on X.
He also referred to Harris as "a DEI hire" in a brief interview Monday, telling CNN that during the 2020 campaign candidate Joe Biden said “he was going to hire a Black female for vice president.”
“What about white females? What about any other group?” Burchett added.
Biden said at a March 2020 Democratic debate that he’d choose a female running mate but did not mention race or ethnicity. Other top running mate contenders at the time included Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
Biden announced Sunday that he was dropping his re-election bid. He endorsed Harris for president the same day.
Burchett, a longtime state legislator in Tennessee and former Knox County mayor who was first elected to Congress in 2018, has previously cited DEI in disparaging Harris. In an interview with Newsmax this month, he said: "When I hear her talk, I just scratch my head and think this is what DEI is really about. It clearly is. She checks all the boxes. She'll say she's of Indian descent one day, then she'll say she's of Black descent. It's just box-checking."
Harris is the first female and Black vice president. She is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, with a résumé that includes being elected district attorney of San Francisco, attorney general of California and U.S. senator.
Burchett, one of eight House Republicans who successfully voted to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy, of California, as House speaker last year, also used a DEI attack line at a heated House committee hearing Monday about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. “You are a DEI horror story,” Burchett told Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.
Conservatives have widely accused Cheatle, a 27-year veteran of the agency, of being unqualified for the top job and said female agents on Trump's Secret Service team were physically incapable of protecting him.
The comments directed at Cheatle follow a pattern at other recent news events where conservative lawmakers and pundits have cited DEI programs as a contributing factor in disasters as disparate as the Boeing-made airplane problems and the Baltimore bridge collapse.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, asked Cheatle during the hearing whether the July 13 attempt to assassinate Trump was "due to DEI or rather systemic failures in communication and potentially safety protocols."
"The incident on the 13th has nothing to do with DEI," Cheatle responded. "The incident on the 13th has to do with a failure or a gap either in planning or communication."
