I don’t know. The 6 finalists that we know about were all white males but we can only speculate who she interviewed to get down to those 6 finalists.
While it’s always a reasonable guess that a white male’s identity played a role in their hiring process, we don’t seem to have any evidence to support it.
Calling someone a “DEI hire” doesn’t just mean that they’re a different race than other people in an organization. It’s used to imply that the person is otherwise unqualified for the job and was specifically hired to fill a diversity requirement.
I don’t think that’s an accurate description of Walz and I’d do some pretty serious eye rolling if MAGA starts trying to portray him as such.