Stephen Moore, one of President Donald Trump’s recent picks to join the Federal Reserve Board, slammed the media on Monday for attacks over old columns he wrote about women in sports.

CNN published an article Monday quoting four columns Moore, a former economic adviser to the Trump campaign, wrote in the early 2000s for National Review magazine. The columns included pithy jokes and commentary about banning female announcers and referees from NCAA basketball games and questioning why ESPN would ever air women’s basketball.

“How outrageous is this? This year they allowed a woman ref a men’s NCAA game. Liberals celebrate this breakthrough as a triumph for gender equity,” Moore wrote. “Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women? What’s next? Women invited to bachelor parties?”

“There’s no joy in dunking over a girl,” Moore added about women joining men’s sports. “Never mind that I can’t dunk (except on the eight-foot baskets). If I could, I wouldn’t celebrate dunking over someone named Tina.”

“This was a spoof,” Moore said in a statement to CNN about the columns. “I have a sense of humor.”

Moore suggested to The Daily Caller that “digging through 25 years of columns … stuff that they know is comedy” reveals the media’s desperation in destroying his nomination. Trump announced via Twitter in March that he intended to nominate Moore to the Federal Reserve Board.

“They can’t defeat me based on my qualifications or my economic ideas so they resort to character assassination,” Moore asserted.

Herman Cain, another one of Trump’s potential nominees for the Fed Board, withdrew his name from consideration just weeks after it was floated to the media. Several GOP senators expressed doubts about Cain, citing his partisanship and old sexual harassment allegations.

Moore, however, told the Caller he does not plan on following Cain’s lead following criticism of his old columns.

“I plan on staying in, although the smear campaign has been hurtful to me, my family, and my children,” Moore said.

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