The Daily Signal - Robby Starbuck Explains How Trump Can Make Bans Last Beyond His Term

Episode Date: April 26, 2025

Foe of DEI Explains How Trump Can Make Bans Last Beyond His Term If President Donald Trump uses the full power of the federal government to outlaw diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, his achievements will outlive his administration, according to anti-DEI activist Robby Starbuck. Starbuck joined The Daily Signal's Elizabeth Mitchell to discuss how Trump can make his DEI bans last.  Tune in to find out what happens next! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk. Business. So do you think that Trump's DEI cuts will be able to last beyond his administration, even if a Democrat were to win in 2028? If we use the full power and full levers of the government through the DOJ and the entire administration and do it in such a punishing way, the way that we should, frankly, I do think it can last because you can set standards and precedent through the courts on what is allowed and what's not allowed, because at the core of this is a central theme and

problem. They have violated the law. They violated existing civil rights laws with most DEI programs because it's racial discrimination by a different name. I'm sitting down with Robbie Starbuck. You've been instrumental in dismantling DEI in woke corporations. How have you seen the culture surrounding DEI change since President Trump's inauguration? I'd say wildly. I mean, you know, I was already on this path of defeating whokeness in DEI in corporate America, but we're going one by one, right?

And there's serious institutional problems that have existed. And, you know, this goes back even to the last Trump administration because you had people who were, you know, lifetime far left bureaucrats that were implanting these rules and sort of poison pills throughout agencies to force this ideology through. And so this is going on and it's just growing and growing and there's poison inside our corporations. So this new administration took a very, very strong approach coming in where they said, look, we're dismantling it, right? and the first step for them is government agencies. So I say, you know, kind of jokingly, like they've got the Department of Government Efficiency attacking DEI as well as, you know, Trump's inner circle. But then on the outside, non-governmentally, I'm kind of like docks the Department of Corporate

Sanity, you know. So I think together in the long run over these four years, we're going to make more than a dent in this ideology and totally get it out of corporate America. So do you think that Trump's DEI cuts will be able to last beyond his administration, even if a Democrat were to win in 2028? Well, I guess it depends on a number of things. It depends on what we do functionally over these four years. If we use the full power and full levers of the government

through the DOJ and the entire administration and do it in such a punishing way, the way that we should, frankly, I do think it can last because you can set standards and precedent through the courts on what is allowed and what's not allowed. Because at the core of this is a central theme and problem. They have violated the law. They violated existing civil rights laws with most DEI programs because it's racial discrimination by a different name. So that being the case, if you're able to hold them accountable in such a way that there's no going around it,

these companies will be aware if a Democrat came into the White House that, okay, they might be there now. But if we do this stuff, what's going to happen to us, if we do it again, is a Republican's going to come in eventually and they're going to come back and we're going to face the same fines and serious issues if we do it. You know, so that's a long way of saying the DOJ has got to be extremely, extremely vicious in the way they go after this. Because if they are, and the EEOC as well, if they go after this to the degree that they can, I believe we could have long-lasting change, at least within government agencies, and also within many corporations. You've exposed just numerous agencies, Walmart, John Deere, many others. What's next on the horizon? Well, you know, we just got done with Constellation Brands this week and with yesterday. IBM. But in between there, we also saw the CEO of Harley-Davidson pushed out, which was a

beautiful thing, because they're one of the only companies that really fought back against me, you know, and did it for about a month. And then ultimately they caved and they gave up all their crazy policies. And in fact, I just found out last night that one of their board members stepped down and resigned and wrote a letter about how they mismanaged the situation with me and that they believe that it is responsible for the long-term disaster that they're going to have as a company. And so he's stepping down because they're not learning their lesson, essentially, by continuing to keep certain board members who still shared the ideology that the CEO had, which is very far left. And so, you know, this wide-ranging, this is a long way of me avoiding your question, by the way,

because I don't ever tell anybody what company's next. But we do that for very good ethical reasons. We try to avoid ever sort of foreshadowing what's next because we don't want anybody using the information to trade on the companies or anything like that. So we're very careful about waiting until the story's ready to come and then we go and put it out. But people can rest easy knowing that we have many different companies on the horizon to change. What's it like to be able to see such direct impact from your work that you know that the corporate situation really has been shaped by what you're doing? I don't think about it at all. Like not even a little bit.

I don't think about it. I don't think I ever will. I'm just not, I think there's people who, like, they do that, right? They think about the impact they're having and they think about, you know, sort of their legacy and, you know, things like that. I'm more of a StackWs person. I care more about winning and I care more about doing the right thing than I do about, like, what is my legacy at the end of the day? Because if right now somebody came to me and they said, Robbie, you would be a pariah in public, but you could destroy. entirely destroy this ideology. Will you accept that deal? And your legacy will be toast like people will think you were just the worst person ever exist.

Say, sure, I'll sign up for that. You know, like, because at the end of the day, it's changing things and being responsible in the way that I steward the platform I have that I care about. You know, so I'm going to just do the right thing and stack up Ws. That's my game plan every day. How have President Trump's executive orders changed the incentives for corporations and government contractors to prioritize merit over DEI. Yeah, you know, I've said this for a long time. Incentives drive everything in business, right? And also in politics, really, what you incentivize,

it really decides what the outcomes you're going to see are. And so the incentives matter quite a lot. In fact, I can give you an example. There was a major defense contractor that we were negotiating with before Trump won the election. And we were going through all of the policy changes they needed to make. And we got hung up on a couple of them that we had agreed on initially, but then they had their general counsel come in and say, hey, we can't do these. And I said, well, natural question why. And they said, because our contracts with DOD actually require us to have these programs. So they had to have the DOD, to have those DOD contracts, rather, they had to have these DEI policies. And so that being the case, you see very clearly the government was incentivizing

it in one direction back then before Trump was elected. Now that he's been elected and they've changed the incentives, you know, that's not something these companies have to think about anymore. They don't need to do the calculus of, hey, do we need to expend this enormous amount of money pushing wokeness on our employees in order to get these contracts? Because all they cared about at the end of the day was getting the contract, right? So incentives matter. And we're showing that, you know, for these companies, you're incentivized to drop all this stuff if you want access to these government contracts. And we also, you know, like I said, we need to be kind of punitive about it. If you have these policies at all within your company, you should not be getting a government

contract. And so that's something we have to see over time how it plays out if, in fact, those companies that still have those policies that are not listening to the EOs and everything, if they're getting government contracts still. If they are, that's something we need to be very, very hard on because we should have a very, very hard standard there that you cannot have any of this if you want to contract with the U.S. government. So of course we've seen a big change in the culture surrounding DEI, critical race theory, but we've also seen a culture in the change of transgenderism. That was something that a lot of companies, were pushing on employees, paying for transitions.

And of course, there's a group called the Human Rights Campaign, giving companies a score to see how good they are on promoting transgenderism. How do you see that sort of culture changing as well? Yeah, you know, I smile every time I hear HRC because I think about the fact that they just had to fire a quarter of their employees. And I feel somewhat responsible for that. So if I take pride in anything, it's probably situations like that because I know people say you're not supposed to celebrate when people get fired, but I'm just going to admit it.

maybe I'm a bad person. I celebrated when they all got fired. And I celebrate when bad people get fired. So I have no good things to say about those people. I think that there's some of the most vile, evil people that are walking the earth, frankly. And what they've done encouraging kids to get sex changes is one of the most barbaric practices you could possibly ever engage in. And I don't think there's any excuse or, you know, way they can dig out of that hole. The HRC functionally should not exist and no corporation should give them a dime. And so we're very resolute in the fact that no company out there should be giving money to any organization that promotes or supports child sex changes. That should not be a radical position. And it's not a radical position anymore. The public

supports exactly what I'm saying. Don't give money to organizations that want to fund or support sex changes for kids. Absolutely. And you said the company you've most recently exposed was IBM, I believe. Could you tell us a little bit about what you found there? Yeah, you know, well, one of the first things that popped in my head is them using the term Latinx. You know, being Latino myself, I find that absurd. There's not a Latino that I know literally none. I don't know one who uses that term. And I'd like to think I know a lot of Latinos.

And they do not, maybe Hispanic, some of them, maybe Latino, maybe Latina, never heard Latinx or Latinx for many of them. You know, it's just absurd. But beyond that, they've got the DEI preference programs, essentially certain races receive preferential treatment. Same thing with diverse suppliers, where if you have the right skin tone or background, then maybe you get preferential treatment as a supplier. Well, all of that is changing now. And then you've got their alignment with the HRC. That is gone. They no longer have a partnership or will work with the HRC. The company previously endorsed the Equality Act, which, as many of your viewers probably know, has nothing to do with

equality. That bill was one that would have legalized men who pretend to be women, you know, who identify as trans, going into girls. sports, going into girls' locker rooms, their bathrooms, their jails, and even women's shelters, you know, which is one of the most disgusting vile things I could imagine is a woman gets beaten by somebody that they're supposed to, or I guess thought loved them, right? And then they get beaten by this person. They go to a shelter for help. And then some mentally ill guy gets let in and exposes himself nude to them in a shared area of this women's, you know, shelter absurdity. You know, any company would get in and endorse this bill, but a bunch of the Fortune 500 company

did because the HRC told them, we need you to sign this, this paper, you know, endorsing this bill. Just absolutely wild. So they've dropped that. They're no longer endorsing that bill. They've moved out of all these DEI policies. They stopped their, they had a crazy DEI podcast. One of my favorite anecdotes is they had allieship circles, which I guess is where you sit around in a circle and you talk about how you can be better allies to the trans community or whatever it is they want to be allied to. That is also gone. No more kumbaya circle allyship sessions. So I think all of this in the end is going to lead to one very important thing, a stronger company, because this is a giant waste of time. Beyond the absurdity of it, the partisanship, the divisiveness, it's just a waste of time.

You know, as somebody who I've had thousands of employees, I would never stand for this type of like just absolute time wasting at work. It's work. Works, work. We're not there for therapy. We're not there to, you know, do a therapy session with one another to give you victimhood validation. We're there to go work. Okay. So, um, Let's make work, work again. Get in, do your job, work well with each other, be nice and kind to your fellow employees, and then go home, enjoy your life. You know, that should be kind of the goal for everybody. It's not a place for, you know, social lives or for your emotional problems.

It's just a place for you to go to work and make money. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for everything you're doing. Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you'd like to add? I don't think so. I don't think so. I love cows. I could say that.

You know, I love cows. I've got some cows. very cute. We've got those little, you know the mini Scottish Highlands. I love those. Do you have those? They're very fluffy, very cute, very soft. I really want one. One of ours, I think, is pregnant right now, actually. And she's a, she's very feisty about her food at the moment. But that's basically my hobby is I love cows. My family actually, they did ranching in Cuba. Oh, wow. And they're from Cuba. So, yeah. That's wonderful. Well, thank you so much.

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