Just just I I don't want to, I don't want
to overstate it, but it is it, it's really, it's,
it's detestable.
Thank you, Jonathan Lemire.
Not, not, not you, but but reports, and I hope
these reports are inaccurate, that Jackie Robinson's profile has been
removed from DoD websites.
Please tell me that this is not true.
Sadly, it is Joe.
A page dedicated to Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson military
history has been removed from the Department of Defenses website.
A previously existing article, yeah, a previously existing article about
Robinsons time in the Army during World War 2 now
shows one of those page not found errors.
And the new web page URL includes DEI before the
story's headline, indicating it might have been taken down as
part of the Trump administration's efforts to eliminate federal DEI
programs.
I'll say I saw this Jeff pass an ESPN writer
tweeted it this morning.
He said quote, all right, good job, Jeff.
He writes the the ghouls who did this should be
ashamed.
And Congressman there, this is not the only one we've
been talking in recent days on the page dedicated to
the Enola Gay.
The flight that dropped the tongue in Japan was taken
down, luckily because the word gay appeared in it.
Other American heroes.
Medgar Everest page dedicated to him, Civil rights hero taken
down.
Jackie Robinson is the epitome of American hero and a
veteran and yet erased from the Department of Defense's website.
Yeah, that's right.
And and the code talkers, too.
Let's not forget about the Navajo code talkers who literally
helped us win World War 2 by by communicating and
keeping our secrets in a way that the Japanese could
not break our codes.
Some incredible stories of heroism trying to be wiped away
because that's what this administration does.
That's what Donald Trump does.
If it doesn't fit his narrative, if it doesn't give
him credit for it, then it doesn't matter and it
should be wiped from history, right?
So part of our challenge here is not allowing that
to happen, to keep history alive, to continue to tell
the truth over and over and over again and call
it out, just like we're doing right now.
Yeah.
I mean, Mike, when you look at this, we talked
about Ira Hayes yesterday who was at Iwo Jima pushing
a flag, his story being removed.
This is just wholesale.
Anything that, according to the Trump administration, reeks of DEI,
which basically means, effectively, if you're not a white guy
who did something in history, we're going to remove that
from the page.
But Jackie Robinson, my God, an icon.
There's Jackie Robinson.
That's only one of many.
There is an African American recipient of the Medal of
Honor who has been removed from the records in the
Pentagon, recipient of the Medal of Honor.
That's not DEI, That's, that's courage under fire.
That's what it is.
Can I talk about the DEI thing, right?
Because listen, I, I understand there are, there are circumstances
where maybe it goes a little too far and it
can be onerous and it can be very challenging.
But, but what this really is when we talk about
DEI is this, these are intentional efforts to actually build
a team, right?
When I was a paratrooper, I was in charge of
a platoon of of 50 paratro troopers that I took
to Iraq.
And those paratroopers came from everywhere around the country, right?
Urban, rural, East Coast, West Coast, NS, white, black, Hispanic,
rich, poor.
And you just can't throw a group of people like
that together and it just automatically becomes a team.
And it operates, right?
You have to be intentional.
You have to understand each other's differences.
You have to bring them together.
You have to get folks talking like that's what these
efforts are really about.
How do we build a team so it's better than
the sum of its parts?
That is what I did as a paratrooper, and that's
what a lot of these DEI efforts are focused on
doing.
So throwing the baby out with the bathwater will make
us less safe, and it's bad for our national security.