Vice President JD Vance said one of President Donald Trump’s biggest achievements since returning to office has been dismantling federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies that he argued discriminated against white and Asian Americans.
Vance made the remarks Sunday during a speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona. He argued that DEI conflicts with American values and with a merit-based society—making it an easy target for the second Trump administration.
“We don’t treat anybody different because of their race or their sex,” Vance told the audience. “So we have relegated DEI to the dustbin of history, which is exactly where it belongs.”
The line drew loud cheers.
He then expanded on the idea, saying:
In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.
And if you’re an Asian, you don’t have to talk around your skin color when you’re applying for college. Because we judge people based on who they are, not on ethnicity and things they can’t control.
We don’t persecute you for being male, for being straight, for being gay, for being anything. The only thing that we demand is that you be a great American patriot. And if you’re that, you’re very much on our team.
Those comments were also met with enthusiastic approval inside the venue.
Vance’s comments about “white” Americans came days after a Compact article circulated widely, claiming that several professional fields had “gatekeepers [who] promised extra consideration to anyone who wasn’t a white man.”
During his speech, Vance also pointed to what he described as a string of accomplishments in less than a year, including “shutting down” the southern border. He urged attendees to keep backing what he called the “America First Party,” echoing Donald Trump Jr., who earlier in the day argued that the Republican Party as it once existed was effectively over.
Vance also took aim at prominent Democrats, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris. He joked that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) had supported a fellow Somali to be the “mayor of Mogadishu — wait, I mean, Minneapolis. A little Freudian slip there.”
