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Unrepentantly Sexist Host Boots Donald Trump From Candidate Forum For Sexism

Natasha Geiling Twitter
CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK
CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

On Friday night, frequent Fox news analyst and founder of RedState, Erick Erickson, announced that he had disinvited Donald Trump from a RedState gathering in Atlanta this weekend, citing sexist comments made by Trump about Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly.

“I have tried to give a great deal of latitude to Donald Trump in his run for the Presidency,” Erickson wrote in a post on RedState Friday evening. “He is not a professional politician and is known for being a blunt talker. He connects with so much of the anger in the Republican base and is not afraid to be outspoken on a lot of issues. But there are even lines blunt talkers and unprofessional politicians should not cross.”

What line did Trump cross? Decency, according to Erickson, for saying Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever” during the GOP debate Thursday night. Kelly, one of the debate moderators, questioned Trump on some of the numerous misogynistic comments he has made over the years.

“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes,” Trump told CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday. “Blood coming out of her wherever.”

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Trump later attempted to pedal back on the comment — saying that he meant to say “whatever,” or saying that he meant “wherever” to mean “Kelly’s nose,” but Erickson wasn’t having any of it.

“His comment was inappropriate. It is unfortunate to have to disinvite him,” Erickson wrote. “But I just don’t want someone on stage who gets a hostile question from a lady and his first inclination is to imply it was hormonal. It just was wrong.”

According to the Washington Post, Trump’s campaign released a statement calling Erickson’s decision “another example of weakness through being politically correct.” The statement also referred to Erickson as a “total loser.”

In Trump’s place, Erickson announced that he would be inviting Kelly to the gathering.

Erickson hasn’t always felt as generous toward the Fox News anchor, however — or women in general.

In 2013, Erickson and Kelly locked horns over a comment Erickson made about women being scientifically inferior to men. Citing biology, Erickson argued that women have always played the non-dominant role to men — and that women who break that dynamic by working, or being the family’s primary breadwinner, have a negative impact on their children and their marriage.

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“When you look at biology — when you look at the natural world — the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complementary role,” Erickson said during a Fox News panel in May of 2013, adding that having females as the primary breadwinners in a family is “bad for kids and bad for marriage.”

Defending his comments in a post on RedState a few days later, Erickson wrote that “women as primary breadwinners does make raising children harder, increasing the likelihood of harm in the development of children.”

Later that week, when Erickson appeared on Kelly’s show, she tore into him for his sexist comments: “I will start with you, Erick. What makes you dominant and me submissive and who died and makes you scientist-in-chief?”

But even years later, Erickson hasn’t apologized or backed down from his belief that women staying at home to raise children is “an ideal and optimal family arrangement.” In 2014, he doubled-down on his earlier remarks about women being scientifically inferior to men, equating the controversy of that statement to the controversy surrounding reclining airline seats.

It seems that the idea that women shouldn’t assume to have the same rights to a career as men is central to Erickson’s view of women’s rights. But it’s hardly the first — or last — time that Erickson has made some disparaging comments toward women.

In 2007, he took to Twitter to praise Fox News for allowing Trump to make disparaging comments about Rosie O’Donnell.

He also frequently attempts to use science and biology to prove his idea that women are inherently inferior to men.

Erickson has also repeatedly used superficial attacks in an attempt to discredit feminists, calling them “ugly” and commenting about how they can’t get dates.

In 2012, Erickson praised the exclusion of women from The Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club, saying, “I kind of like the idea that women aren’t members of The Masters. Good Lord, I don’t want to be hanging out at some women’s event!”

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Later that year, he joked that the first night of the 2012 Democratic National Convention was akin to the Vagina Monologues, because it featured a number of speeches by women, including First Lady Michelle Obama.

Based on Erickson’s feelings about Women and Gender Studies as an academic pursuit, it seems like he did not mean the comparison to the famous feminist text to be a compliment.

Following widespread criticism of his Vagina Monologue comparison, Erickson issued an apology via Twitter, claiming that he wasn’t intending to offend anyone with the Tweet.

And that — Erickson said on Twitter early Saturday morning — is the real difference between his sexist comments and Trump’s sexist comments. Erickson might have made countless sexist remarks, but at least he apologized for one of them.