Pence chief of staff is a homophobe - imagine that

Vice President Mike Pence has chosen Marc Short, who served as President Trump’s legislative affairs director for most of his first two years in office, to be his chief of staff, a person familiar with the announcement said Tuesday.

In returning to the administration he left last June, Mr. Short will fill the role that was left vacant by Nick Ayers when he resigned earlier this year.

  NYT

And we never did see a believable reason why he did that, simultaneously turning down Trump's offer to be the president's chief of staff.

The real reason for Ayers’ abrupt change of course is obvious, and for an administration facing growing challenges, ominous.

Ayers is the prototype of a young, ambitious Republican operative, well versed in the ways of both Washington and Red State America. When he was gunning for the job, Ayers would have known that getting it would involve lawyering up and facing closer scrutiny of his own affairs, not to mention a temperamental boss. Until this weekend he seemed ready for those risks.

At a decisive point, Ayers has to have reached the judgment that taking this job with the administration, or even keeping the job he has, would no longer be good for Nick Ayers. [...] Ayers reportedly is set to run a pro-Trump Super PAC

  Gainesville Times

Mr. Short’s new job was announced at the vice president’s staff meeting on Tuesday morning. He could not immediately be reached for comment. He is expected to start in a few weeks.

With Mr. Short’s return, the White House will deepen its roster of seasoned veterans as the president heads into what is expected to be a grueling re-election campaign. Mr. Short also has extensive experience dealing with a divided Congress, and was seen as an establishment voice in the West Wing. Before he left last year, he had been among the bluntest voices in the president’s circle warning about the grim prospects for House Republicans in the midterm elections.

  NYT

But wait...

“I regret using language as an undergraduate college student that was not reflective of the respect I try to show others today,” Marc Short said in a statement to the Daily Beast, the news outlet that broke the story on the article Short had written for his college newspaper.

“We have all learned a lot about AIDS over the past 30 years and my heart goes out to all the victims of this terrible disease.”

In the column from 1992, which was unearthed by Democratic opposition research group American Bridge, Short wrote that “repugnant” homosexual intercourse was the leading cause of the transmission of HIV and AIDS.

He criticized “the propaganda campaign ignited by gay activists and carelessly perpetuated by journalists whose intent is to scare all heterosexuals into believing they are prime targets for contraction of the disease.”

“The campaign's purpose,” Short wrote, “is both to lobby Congress for more federal funding of AIDS research and to destigmatize the perverted lifestyles homosexuals pursue.”

  The Hill

Yeah, the more he learned about aids, the less homophobic he became. Sure. That's believable. Pence chose him precisely for his attitude toward gays, I have no doubt.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.