Just before ending his four-year tenure as secretary of state, John Kerry again showed the world just how incompetent he is.

Secretary of State John Kerry is publicly apologizing for the State Department’s institutional discrimination in the past against gay and lesbian diplomats. In a statement, Kerry says discrimination suffered by homosexual State Department workers has gone on since the 1940s. He says denying some people jobs and forcing diplomats out of the foreign service was “wrong then” and “wrong today.”

Speaking on behalf of the department, Kerry on Monday apologized to all those who were discriminated against and said the department was committed to “diversity and inclusion for all our employees, including members of the LGBTI community.”

I must be missing something. Hasn’t John Kerry been secretary of state for almost four years? And he is just now realizing that the State Department has been discriminating against members of the LGBTI community? It doesn’t speak well for someone to admit that he has been so clueless about his own department. The State Department couldn’t be too committed to “diversity and inclusion for all our employees, including members of the LGBTI community” if Kerry has permitted this behavior to go on for his entire four years. It also speaks volumes about his immediate predecessor, Hillary Clinton, in that she never discovered this astounding fact in her four years as secretary of state. So, under the bus she goes with him.

Why make a statement of this type only days before the inauguration? Is this revelation supposed to make it harder for his successor? I can’t imagine how, since the people who were supposedly discriminated against haven’t even been hired yet under this administration.

Is it to make the incoming administration fearful of discrimination lawsuits? That’s nonsensical.

Is it supposed to make the incoming administration think that John Kerry himself will be watching for discrimination? That’s also nonsensical, since John Kerry will hopefully fade away onto one of his yachts and have no political power.

Where are any facts? By my estimation, anyone who was discriminated against in the 1940s would have to be at least in his 90s now, and it is doubtful that any such person is starting legal actions against a supposed discrimination 76 years ago. Records wouldn’t reveal sexual orientation because that wasn’t even discussed in the ’40s, much less a question on a job application.

I mistrust anything being said by anyone in the current administration because of all the proven lies we have endured over the past eight years, including the infamous line, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” but I fail to see what purpose a statement like this makes other than to make John Kerry look even more of a fool.

And the wheels on the bus go round and round…

Claire Hawksley is retired from her nursing and I.T. careers. She can be reached at chawks60@comcast.net.