Erika Kirk speaking at the 2025 Young Women's Leadership Summit in Grapevine, Texas
America, meet your new super-qualified member of the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors.
Is it someone with military experience? Nope.
Maybe some post-secondary education experience? Wrong again.
It’s Erika Kirk, silly!
Taking over the seat that her late husband Charlie Kirk held for about five months before he was killed, Kirk will be tasked with making recommendations about the academy to the Defense Department and the president.
You can tell that the administration is really proud of this by the fact that neither the board nor President Donald Trump announced her appointment. Instead, her name just randomly appeared on the board’s website.
Kirk has no relevant experience, so much so that even a White House spokesperson could only muster up that she would be “a fearless advocate for the most elite airpower force in the history of the world.”
Does … does the White House understand that this board exists to help the Air Force Academy better educate more than 4,000 cadets, not demand more planes or whatever?
It’s ridiculous that we have to pretend that Kirk is qualified to join the board, which works to “inquire into the morale, discipline, and social climate, the curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods, and other matters relating to the Academy that the Board decides to consider.”
It’s also a slap in the face to the military, even as Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pretend they’re the most pro-military folks ever.
Kirk’s experience consists mostly of being a beauty queen and founding a “Bible-based streetwear brand,” whatever that means. Her LinkedIn profile lists her past roles as a real estate agent, model, and casting director.
She’s also ostensibly studying for a doctorate in biblical studies at Liberty University, which must be tough to manage with all of her flashy public appearances, where her entrances are nothing but content for TikTok.
The one thing Kirk is likely to do is follow in the footsteps of her late husband—who demanded to know how the Academy “doesn’t push the worldview of oppression, oppressor/oppressed dynamics, anti-western, anti-American, and gender ideology”—and harass staff about following Trump’s executive orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Though she no doubt thinks that she was put in this role based on merit, Kirk is actually the DEI hire here.
No, not actual DEI, but the DEI that is at the heart of this administration—where unqualified yahoos are stuffed in key roles not because they’re qualified but because they’re willing to show fealty to Trump.
Trump’s Cabinet is littered with these people. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. not only has no experience that qualifies him for his job but is also an unhinged antivaxxer. And Hegseth’s main qualifications are being a bone-deep racist and having no qualms about unfettered violence.
Dearly departed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also had no experience that made her fit for the job, save for a willingness to shamelessly lie about the actions of her immigration goons. Her likely replacement, Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, also has no relevant experience, unless you count his appearance on Fox News, where he pretended he’s been to war. (He hasn’t.)
But these meritless hires aren’t limited to high-ranking, well-known members of the administration. Trump put one of his former receptionists on the Commission of Fine Arts despite having no experience in the arts or architecture or anything really. But it’s pretty helpful to have that sort of DEI hire on a board that will approve his big dumb ballroom.
And we can’t overlook the considerable number of temporary U.S. attorney appointments that courts have ruled illegal. That situation has arisen because Trump is committed to stuffing his former personal attorneys and Big Lie believers into those roles.
Or how about Thomas Fugate, the 22-year-old whose job experience consisted of working on Trump’s campaigns, interning at the Heritage Foundation, and—according to his LinkedIn—serving as secretary general of a Model United Nations club. He now oversees terrorism prevention, which should definitely make you feel very safe.
We also endured random DOGE babies who used ChatGPT to kill thousands of grants that the chatbot found to include any sort of “DEI.”
There’s no merit here. It’s a full-fledged affirmative action program for people who couldn’t get a job in the real world. They’re all objectively unqualified for the jobs they have, and they only got them because they share Trump’s worldview.
The administration may pretend that these people were hired based on merit, but we don’t have to join in. And when Democrats get back in power, it will be a delight to clean house.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos
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