Much much simpler than that. Remember how just a few months ago everything the right didn't like was "woke"? And a few months before that how everything the right didn't like was CRT?

Well, we are here now. All problems are a result of DEI. It really does not matter that it's completely insane to view the world like this. Right wing media has it's current swear word of the month and that word (or in this case acronym) is DEI.

What's super effective about this tactic is exactly what the mayor hints at. It's a way to say the n-word without saying it.

The angle here is the right is a bunch of racist bigots and framing all the ills of the world in terms of that racist bigotry makes their lizard brained viewers happy (well, angry, but at the right people).

Quiet literally how Nazi propaganda worked. Blame all the problems of germany on the jews and the non-jews right wing morons will happily nod along with "yer right, it is the Jews' fault our society is crumbling!" It did not have to make sense or be reasonable. You just constantly plant that fear and suspicion in your dumbass follower's brains.

It’s similar to how they’re using the disaster to decry open borders allowing terrorists in. Meanwhile, the crew on the bridge that died in the disaster, on their night shift lunch break from fixing potholes, was made up almost exclusively of immigrants… everything is just an opportunity to grab engagement for your talking points now, no matter how absurd. The idea that this disaster is being used to fan hatred of immigrants, while the people who were killed were literally hard-working immigrants… it just breaks my brain.

So basically I guess, no surprise that they’re also somehow connecting the bridge to Brandon Scott, and diversity hires (lol, he won an election fuckos, not an HR hiring process). It’s all a part of the unreality we now live in.

Everyone knows White people are better swimmers

A White mayor would have swam right up to that puppy and sank it instead

Baltimore was one of the cities which suffered the most from redlining and white flight in the 60s and 70s, and has been an anti-civil-rights talking point for racist assholes since then. The city literally ran interstates through black neighborhoods to have an excuse to tear them down, and then refused to sell the property in other areas. Then, when the civil rights act happened, the county worked very hard to set up demarcation boundaries for city services to make sure that the tax revenue from the wealthy suburbs would stay completely separate.

Basically white people in Baltimore were told they had to live near Black people and they threw a massive tantrum about it.

a press conference on the collapse gave them the platform to spew their hate, other than that it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the issue.

edit: he's also an incumbent so they've probably been calling him that for his entire previous term already.