For the life of me, I can’t fathom why CNN keeps arch-conservative Scott Jennings on their network. His goofy takes aren’t contrary or even controversial, they’re just dumb. Often, Scott is downright offensive.
Couple that with the fact that all anyone is talking about right now is the fires in California (as should be the case), and it’s guaranteed that Scott is going to have something ridiculous to say about them.
In the case of CNN’s NewsNight coverage of the California fires, he found himself facing off against Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. She’s not someone you want to be in a debate with in the first place, but Scott was a special kind of dumb on Wednesday night. He picked the smartest black woman in the House of Representatives to argue with over whether firefighters should more appropriately be white males.
Guess which side Jennings picked.
“There was some interest,” Jennings said, “in the firefighters and the fire departments in California. And the interest was, was that there were too many white men who were firefighters,” he continued, smirking. Then he described a process (fully imagined by conservatives) by which California allegedly decided to suddenly replace white male firefighters in the state through a DEI hiring program.
“I’m wondering now,” he said, after the set crosstalk died down, “if your house is burning down, how much do you care what color the firefighters are?” He threw up his hands in front of him in a half shrug.
Like the political right has been doing with countless other failures — from bridge collapses to bank failures to the “assassination attempt” on Donald Trump — Jennings was attempting to blame a poor outcome on DEI hiring practices.
Jasmine Crockett was having none of it.
So, let me be clear. Because you are a woman or because — because I know that some of the right has been sharing these photos of the fact that, I believe that the fire chief may be a woman or something — that has nothing to do with it. We are looking at qualifications. What diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has always been about is saying, “You know what, open this up. Don’t just look at the White men. Open it up and recognize that other people can be qualified.”
And the fact that we want to, at a time when people are dying, decide that a country of immigrants is failing or people are dying because the same very people that built this country — ’cause the last time I checked, y’all didn’t say that anything was wrong with the White House. And I can promise you, it was my ancestors that built the White House.
So, listen, if we have been good enough to build this country, we are good enough to serve and die overseas, we are good enough to serve in other ways. And the fact that people actually decide that they want to engage in public service, whether it’s sitting in Congress or whether it’s serving on the fire department or the police department, should not be an issue. The fact is, stop trying to act as if only White men are the ones that are capable because right now, you’re sitting at a table with three very capable black women.
Jennings, after denying that he was saying that, said it again. “I’m just simply saying that, as a matter of public policy in California, the main interest in the fire department lately has been in DEI programming and budget cuts. And now we have this massive fire, and people are upset.”
He’s literally blaming nonwhite firefighters for the worst fire in California’s history. Is he accounting for the fact that the fires there have been getting worse year over year? Is he entertaining the notion that climate change could have anything to do with it? Is the situation exacerbated in his mind by the fact that the normally gentle Santa Ana winds are blowing at a hundred miles an hour right now?
Of course not, because that doesn’t serve the conservative racist talking points about DEI.
We are living now in a country where a giant cross section of one of the two major political parties subscribes to what used to just be a conspiracy theory — The Great Replacement Theory. They believe that, through the complicity of elites, nonwhites are being allowed to and encouraged to replace largely white populations and demographics.
It started as a theory about Muslims. But American conservatives and far right activists have turned it into ANY nonwhites — Black people, immigrants, you name it — replacing ALL white males.
It’s paranoia at best, racism at least, and Scott Jennings in a nutshell. Watch:
BOOM: Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett dresses down Scott Jennings on the benefits of DEI pic.twitter.com/5SlGmCUA58 [1]
— Sarah Jane Winfoot 🇭🇹 (@SJWinfoot) January 9, 2025 [2]