The panel for CNN’s Saturday Table For Five exploded over Vice President J.D. Vance’s assertion that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies led to “deliberate” discrimination against white men.

Host Sarah Sidner played video of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chair encouraging white men to sue their employers if they feel they’ve been wronged.

Sidner said that not only did Vance repost the EEOC’s message, he took “many steps further by claiming that DEI isn’t just, quote, ‘lame diversity seminars or racial slogans. It was a deliberate program of discrimination primarily,’ he said, ‘against white men.‘”

“Did some white men get screwed over because of DEI? Probably,” said panelist and comedian Paul Mecurio. “Did everybody to the point where you do — that was like a shyster personal injury law firm commercial, wasn’t it?”

He continued, “So this isn’t correcting a systemic inequity. It’s treating discrimination as symmetrical. And it’s not because what you’re doing is you’re ignoring the imbalance of power that led to the civil rights legislation. And so do I think that some white men have unfairly been treated as a result of DEI? Yeah. Life’s kind of sloppy that way. But it’s not perfect. But I don’t think you go so far as to tell everybody to start suing the government and start suing your work.”

“Wait, hold on,” Republican politician Joe Borelli interjected. “Why shouldn’t a white person who has been discriminated, which you just admitted is real and it has happened? Why wouldn’t a white person who has been discriminated and can prove a case, or at least can bring a case? Why wouldn’t they be able to sue for that?”

“Because I think the federal government, in that kind of announcement is emboldening people that maybe don’t have a claim, but feel the government is telling me to do it, I’m going to go do it. That’s why,” Mecurio shot back.

“Maybe the bigger question is, why is the vice president putting this out there, telling people to sue?” Sidner asked.

SIDNER: Because there’s a big question here. There is an entire community that feels discriminated against by the —

BRIANNA LYMAN: Yeah, white men.

SIDNER: — president. The Somali community feels discriminated against by the president. He called them garbage.

LYMAN: American white — Joe Biden called us garbage — white American men are being discriminated on the basis of their race and gender.

In October 2024, then-President Joe Biden said, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” after a Trump rally comedian referred to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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