Trump's Nominee to Replace Kavanaugh Once Wrote That Women Should Stay 'Sober' to Avoid Date Rape 

By Clio Chang  |  January 14, 2019 | 7:46pm
Politics

Neomi Rao, who serves as Donald Trump’s administrator at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, was nominated by Trump in November to replace Brett Kavanaugh’s seat on the federal bench. Rao’s checks off almost every box you could imagine for a Trump nominee—Federalist Society member, George Mason University’s Scalia Law School professor, defender of an abhorrent practice called “dwarf-tossing,” and, according to new reporting by Mother Jones, prolific writer of articles espousing radically racist and sexist views in her campus paper.

As a undergrad, Rao wrote articles for the Yale Free Press and the Yale Herald attacking everything from affirmative action and LGBT rights to feminism and climate change. Here’s an excerpt pulled by Mother Jones on what Rao wrote about date rape in the Yale Herald:

“I’ve been to a lot of fraternity parties on this campus. It has always seemed self evident to me that even if I drank a lot, I would still be responsible for my actions. A man who rapes a drunk girl should be prosecuted. At the same time, a good way to avoid a potential date rape is to stay reasonably sober. And if she drinks to the point where she can no longer choose, well, getting to that point was part of her choice.” She concluded, “Implying that a drunk woman has no control of her actions, but that a drunk man does strips women of all moral responsibility.”

That’s right, Trump’s pick for Kavanaugh’s replacement, a man who was accused of attempted rape, is someone who once blamed women who drink for not doing their due diligence to “avoid a potential date rape.”

Rao’s reactionary views also included a piece entitled “Separate, But More Than Equal,” in which she and a co-author “suggested that minority students were getting an unfair advantage by having special deans devoted to helping them.” Rao also wrote that feminism had “contemporary associations with radicalism and lesbianism” and called the scientific evidence on global warming “a dangerous orthodoxy.”

According to Politico, Rao is also on Trump’s shortlist should Ruth Bader Ginsburg depart the Supreme Court.

The more we learn about Rao, the worse it gets—something that she seems to have in common with most of Trump’s other nominees.

 
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