Trump Admin Hiring Video Gamers As Air Traffic Controllers

Once again, the anti-DEI administration is proving that its propaganda campaign against the very concept of diversity was never about merit or a fear of lacking qualifications — it was just plain old bigotry the whole time. How has the administration of President Donald Trump demonstrated this, you ask? Well, on Sunday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that his office has taken a huge step towards solving the nation’s air traffic controller shortfall problem by — *checks notes* — recruiting video gamers to do the job.

“In April, we launched a NEW CAMPAIGN to recruit video gamers as air traffic controllers – and supercharged the entire hiring process to get the BEST & BRIGHTEST in faster,” Duffy tweeted. “The results are HISTORIC.”

In fact, Duffy boasted that “94% of (the administration’s) hiring goal (was) met,” in the “fastest time ever to reach (that) target,” and that it had hired more than 2,000 gamers, which was “the most in a single year.”

Now, for the moment, let’s bypass the sheer absurdity of arbitrarily focusing on people who enjoy playing video games in an effort to recruit people who will have the lives of millions of aircraft passengers in their hands. I mean, I don’t know what they’re going to do when GTA 6 drops and half their workforce calls in sick, but whatever.

Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that all of these gamers who were recruited to be air traffic controllers based on their vast experience holding PS5 controllers are just as well-trained and prepared as anyone else who has done the job. This still wouldn’t change the fact that if someone had announced that they had just hired 2,000+ Black people or women to be air traffic controllers, and that the hiring process was the fastest in the history of the profession, there’s not a mouth-breathing MAGA Caucasian in the country who wouldn’t be foaming at the mouth, screaming about how DEI has made air travel less safe.

Hell, it was just last year that Trump stood behind a podium and suggested, with no evidence, as usual, that a deadly air collision between an American Airlines regional jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter happened due to DEI hiring in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Mind you, Trump was, in 2025, speaking out against the air traffic controller diversity program that he launched in 2019.

Of course, Duffy posted his announcement along with a video that was careful to feature a group of gamers-turned-air traffic controllers that was certainly diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender, but that could be an attempt at political correctness; the equivalent of Trump strategically sitting what few Black people show up to his otherwise white-ass rallies right up front where the cameras are.

Here’s the thing: I’m sure we all remember when white conservatives and wannabe white conservatives like Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens were talking about how terrified they would be if they saw a Black or female pilot because they would assume they were DEI employees.

After Kirk was killed, and people began bringing that talking point up as an example of his racism, conservatives vehemently defended him, saying he wasn’t being racist, and that if DEI weren’t a thing, he’d have no reason to be concerned. It’s as if they all imagined that DEI recruiters are just walking up to random Black people and asking, “Hey, wanna be a pilot?” rather than targeting specific, underrepresented groups for opportunities to take the exact same training, and log in all the same training hours, and follow the same hiring process that every other pilot must go through before they’re certified to fly commercial aircrafts. They seemed to think Black people and women would be so careless with their own lives that they’d just hop behind a cockpit and take off without actually knowing what they’re doing.

Suddenly, though, many of those same people understand that training is training when defending the initiative to hire gamers as air traffic controllers.

How about this guy, who praised Duffy on this new initiative and still, without catching a whiff of his own irony, fixed his caucasity-infused mouth to talk down on “DEI lunacy”?

The U.S. Department of Transportation also explained its reasoning in a press release, saying, “With only about 25 percent of controllers holding a traditional college degree, this effort is focused on reaching talented young people pursuing alternative career paths, many of whom are active in gaming.” Again — let them have been talking about non-college-educated Black people. The reaction would be much different.

None of this is terribly surprising, of course. Trump’s entire second-term administration, full of overwhelmingly white, woefully underqualified dunces, has been a living demonstration of how it was never about merit.

Sad.

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