Trump stands by Fed pick who 'joked' about banning women from sports

In a normal presidential administration, a nominee for a key role who was later exposed as an unqualified sexist would likely be abandoned and replaced with someone new.

But the Trump administration is anything but normal. And Trump is sticking by Stephen Moore, his pick for a spot on the important Federal Reserve Board, who was found to have written profoundly sexist columns about women back in the early 2000s.

But Moore’s record of offensive columns isn’t turning off Trump.

“We’re still behind him,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told reporters on Monday.

Moore’s sexist comments first came to light last week, when CNN unearthed columns Moore wrote for the conservative media outlet National Review, in which he proposed banning women from college basketball games and made fun of female athletes for wanting to be equally compensated for their work.

“Here’s the rule change I propose: No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer venders, no women anything,” Moore wrote about banning women from college basketball games.

“Women are permitted to participate, if and only if, they look like Bonnie Bernstein,” Moore continued, making an overtly sexual suggestion that Bernstein wear a halter top while reporting.

Moore wrote that he wanted to ban women from college basketball so that “men can take vacation from women.”

Moore has since claimed he wrote his offensive material as a “spoof” because he has a “sense of humor.”

In an interview with ABC News host George Stephanopoulos, he insisted they were “humor columns” that he now regrets writing.

But for Moore’s supposed regret, he thinks it’s unfair that his offensive views should be held against him. He claimed that reporters unearthing his own writing is a “smear campaign.”

The sexist comments aren’t the only awful things Moore has written about in his long history as a columnist with conservative media outlets.

Back in 2003, Moore “joked” about using a photo of Hillary Clinton over the toilet to teach his son “perfect accuracy” while urinating.

Moore also wrote about showing his sons photos of the dead and mutilated bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons and told them, “This is what happens to kids that grow up to be Democrats.”

Moore also wrote about another “joke” he told his kids in which he said he wanted to “round up all blue state liberals, sterilize them, disenfranchise them, and place them into reeducation internment camps.”

On top of all this, Moore’s economic views are far out of the mainstream, including his belief that unemployment insurance is “paid vacation” and that giving full-time workers paid sick leave is “dangerous.”

In addition to his bad “humor,” he also is a tax cheat who failed to pay child support after his divorce. And he admitted, shortly after he was nominated last month, that he doesn’t even understand what the job is.

“I’m kind of new to this game, frankly, so I’m going to be on a steep learning curve myself about how the Fed operates, how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions,” he said “It’s hard for me to say even what my role will be there, assuming I get confirmed.”

But none of it — not Moore’s problematic record nor the fact that he is plainly unqualified — has dissuaded Trump from wanting to give him a job many agree he shouldn’t have.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.