Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that attacks claiming Vice President Harris was hired as part of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is “stupid.”
“I would say, two attacks I’ve heard Republicans give that are totally stupid and dumb to do is the DEI attack, okay?” McCarthy said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press NOW.”
“The other attack that I would not do is saying that the president has to resign,” he added. “That would be an advantage for Kamala.”
Harris is likely to replace President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket after the incumbent announced over the weekend he would withdraw from the race. If elected in November, she would make history again as the first woman and person of South Asian descent to hold the nation’s highest office.
The vice president has already garnered endorsements from top Democratic lawmakers, governors, local officials and Biden.
“This DEI, that seems like a petty … look, I disagree with DEI, but she is the vice president of the United States, she is the former U.S. Senator,” McCarthy said. “These congressmen that are saying it, they’re wrong in their own instance.”
DEI programs are often aimed at promoting fairness and equality in institutions and attempt to tackle historical inequities connected with racism, homophobia and sexism.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) has gone after Harris as a “DEI hire” and referred to her earlier this week in a post on the social platform X as “our DEI vice president.”
“The incompetency level is at an all-time high in Washington,” Burchett wrote. “The media propped up this president, lied to the American people for three years, and then dumped him for our DEI vice president.”
Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) similarly told local media that Democrats will elevate her because they “feel they have to stick with her because of her ethnic background.”
DEI programs have faced pushback from the right, with current Republican vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (Ohio) introducing a bill in June to ban the initiative and block funding for the programs.
“The DEI agenda is a destructive ideology that breeds hatred and racial division,” Vance said at the time. “It has no place in our federal government or anywhere else in our society. I’m proud to introduce this legislation, which would root out DEI from our federal bureaucracy by eliminating such programs and stripping funding for DEI policies anywhere it exists.”