MAGA Influencers Turn on United CEO Scott Kirby — Is the Airline Scrubbing the Receipts?

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has gone from Woke to MAGA which the change in administrations. Airlines are one of the most heavily regulated industries. There are things he wants from the federal government. And under the guidance of President Obama’s former press secretary, as executive vice president of communications, he’s navigated that landscape deftly.

Kirby has gone from supporting affirmative action in California and leading the charge on vaccine mandates during the pandemic, to being an outspoken defender of President Trump’s tariffs even when they’re obviously bad for his own business (not to mention the economy). United donated $1 million to the President’s inauguration.

That shift is being noted on the MAGA right, where he’s being called out for hyprocricy – claiming to hire based on merit (on a podcast with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s wife) but having previously committed to aggressively recruit women and minorities as pilots. That probably means getting better pilots because whole segments of the population were largely overlooked in the talent pool.

This is probably the least good example of a fairly true phenomenon, that folks on the right should probably celebrate rather than castigate. Corporate America had largely ‘gone left’ in recent years and that tide has turned because the federal government is powerful – and less committed to the rule of law. So executives kowtow.

United CEO Scott Kirby just claimed he only hires based on merit

Here’s a clip of him saying he takes race and gender into account when hiring and complains that there’s too many White males in the airline industry.

.@united thinks we will forget.

The internet is forever! pic.twitter.com/3XdJgGFwvY

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 9, 2026

A much better example is United actually committing to make a specific hire – for its board of directors! – on the basis of race.

In 2020, during Peak Woke (when then-American Airlines CEO Doug Parker was reading White Fragility and wearing a Black Lives Matter wristband, United committed to choose board members on the basis of race.

It seems like the press release is gone from United’s website. But Google remembers:

And the release is still on the internet.

United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (UAL) today announced that as part of its overall commitment to recruit and develop more diverse talent to better serve customers, its Board of Directors expects to add a second Black board member.

The Board of Directors collectively agreed last December to further diversify the board, conduct a search and recruit an additional Black board member.

That commitment was satisfied in 2021.

United was all-in on pronouns, had speech codes, and suspended Twitter ads when those things were all the rage.

Now their language has shifted, as the prevailing political winds have shifted, and so Scott Kirby appears to be our modern Captain Renault. United now even flies to Casablanca!

I have no conviction, if that’s what you mean. I blow with the wind, and the prevailing wind happens to be from Vichy.

I can’t wait to see the airline’s ideological reinvention in 2028!