WASHINGTON (AP) – As Donald Trump fills out his Cabinet, it’s looking less like America’s population and more like the world Trump has always orbited: wealthy, white, male-dominated and business-minded.
Trump, who railed against what he called “politically correct crap” during his no-holds-barred presidential campaign, is on track to create the least diverse Cabinet in a quarter-century.
The uniformity is particularly striking in the president-elect’s picks for the highest-profile Cabinet and White House jobs. While he has selected a handful of women and minorities for lower-profile posts, his choices for the big four Cabinet slots – Treasury, State, Defense and Justice – and his top White House jobs – chief of staff, national security adviser and senior adviser – are all white men.
So, too, will white men run the departments of Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.
Should Trump be unable to complete his term as president, the top eight people in the line of succession are white men from the Cabinet and Congress. That number could grow to 12 if he picks a white man for Agriculture secretary. North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, is the only woman believed to be in the mix.