“It arose out of a time that Charlie was in trouble with the left for having said something that they thought was terrible, and I knew it wasn’t terrible,” Kelly said, pulling up the clip. “And it was part of his courage in saying something that everybody believes but they would never say it out loud. It was about how they were so focused on hiring women and black pilots and minority pilots and going from 3 percent to 50 percent, that we were going to have to worry about who the hell is flying the planes."
"What do you mean?" Kelly asked, "black people are only 13 percent of the population, how are 50 percent of pilots being… anyway, Charlie said that, people said he was a racist, which was bullsh*t.” Kelly apologized for swearing before rolling the clip of Kirk defending his comments.
In that clip, Kirk said:
“DEI invites unwholesome thinking. And I said, I was saying in the clip, that’s not who I am, that’s not what I believe, but what it does is that it makes us worse versions of ourselves, Megyn. That’s the whole point of what I was saying is that, I now look at everything through a hyper radicalized diversity quota lens, because of their massive insistence to try to hit these ridiculous racial hiring quotas," she said.
"Three to four percent of current pilots are blacks right now. Three to four percent. Now, they want to say that this is just the hiring class of candidates. Are there enough candidates to fill the 50 percent quota. The other question to ask is, why is it a problem? Let’s ask to the premise, why is it a problem that 81 percent are white? And I love the Axios guy saying ‘white males are dominating the cockpit.’ Yeah those pesky safe flights are dominating our society, Megyn. All of those 25 years of commercial airliners that have kept us—dominating? As if the white male is like oppressing us with their beautiful landings?”
Kirk’s concerns came as the Biden administration’s FAA embraced equity-focused policies that many in the industry fear could compromise safety.
In 2022, FAA Acting Deputy Chief Operating Officer Angela McCullough said the Flight Program Operations division was “white male dominated” and should be “representative of the whole country.” In footage later obtained by Matt Walsh, McCullough pressed managers to address “internal bias” and make the division look more like the broader population.
Critics argue that this mindset puts identity politics above skill and safety. Walsh reported that members of the industry told him DEI is “endangering the public and distracting them from their work.” One example cited was a trans-identifying Delta Airlines pilot who had “repeatedly received bad reviews from captains” but was promoted regardless.
The FAA has also confirmed that it places priority on hiring people with “severe intellectual disability” as part of its inclusion initiatives. Its website says the agency “actively recruits, hires, promotes, retains, develops and advances people with disabilities” and even allows managers to fast-track hires through a non-competitive “on-the-spot” process.
The push has raised more eyebrows in the wake of recent safety scares, including the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-9 MAX door plug blowout that forced an emergency landing earlier this year.
