Trump Fed pick ’embarrassed’ by past writings on women in sports

Stephen Moore, President Trump‘s controversial pick for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, said he is “embarrassed” by his past writings about women’s involvement in sports.

“There was this article this week about this article [I wrote], which was kind of tongue-in-cheek about women in sports. I just want to say this: I’m embarrassed by it,” Moore said in an interview with radio host John Catsimatidis that aired Sunday on AM 970 in New York.

“I’m embarrassed by some of the things I said 18 years ago. They do not reflect my positions. I am not making light of it. It was a wrongheaded thing to do.”

{mosads}”I want to apologize to people who are offended by it, because my sisters were offended by it,” he added.

“I’m not saying that I’m blameless, and I’m not saying I’m an angel. I’m just saying that these kinds of things don’t have a lot to do with whether I’m qualified to be on the federal reserve board and setting interest rates.”

Several columns that Moore wrote for the National Review in the early 2000s were unearthed by CNN’s KFile this week.

In them Moore suggested that women should have no role whatsoever in men’s college basketball.

“Here’s the rule change I propose: No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer vendors, no women anything,” he wrote in March 2002.

He made similar comments and defended that proposal in the other columns.

Moore initially said the article was “a spoof. I have a sense of humor.”

Amid the backlash over these and other past comments, Moore has said that he has no plans to remove his name from consideration unless he becomes a political “liability” to Republicans.