Trump Fed Pick Stephen Moore Withdraws Amid Criticism
Stephen Moore, the former pro-Trump CNN commentator, has decided to withdraw from consideration to serve on the Federal Reserve, the president announced on Twitter.
“Steve won the battle of ideas including Tax Cuts and deregulation which have produced non-inflationary prosperity for all Americans,” Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon. “I’ve asked Steve to work with me toward future economic growth in our Country.”
Steve Moore, a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person, has decided to withdraw from the Fed process. Steve won the battle of ideas including Tax Cuts....
-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2019
....and deregulation which have produced non-inflationary prosperity for all Americans. I’ve asked Steve to work with me toward future economic growth in our Country.
-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2019
As recently as this morning, Moore had said he didn’t plan on withdrawing from consideration over a litany of sexist and racially-charged statements he has made in person and in writing over the last two decades.
“My biggest ally is the president,” Moore told reporters Thursday morning, according to Bloomberg. “He’s full speed ahead.”
Moore sent a letter to Trump asking the president to withdraw his name from consideration due to the widespread media coverage of his previous columns and appearances.
“The unrelenting attacks on my character have become untenable for me and my family and 3 more months of this would be too hard on us,” Moore wrote.
Moore statement to POTUS pic.twitter.com/Yf1loLMxOK
-- Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 2, 2019
Moore has appeared on both CNN and Fox News as an analyst, and served as an editorial board member of The Wall Street Journal, but has come under fire in recent weeks over columns he wrote for the conservative magazine National Review.
“We are being force fed lady hoops. I have never in my life met anyone who actually liked watching women’s basketball,” Moore wrote in a March 2002 column, adding that it was a “travesty” that women were playing alongside men in playground games and in recreational leagues. He also called equal pay for men and women a “laughably bad idea" in a 2014 column, and criticized female athletes calling for pay equality, claiming they sought “equal pay for inferior work.”
Moore was also under fire for suggesting that it’s the man’s role to be the “breadwinner” of a family, blaming a decline of the family on women being more “economically self-sufficient.” Those comments garnered more attention when it was reported a judge held Moore in contempt for failing to pay over $300,000 in child support and alimony to his ex-wife, Allison Moore, whom he divorced in 2011.
In recent days, Moore’s chances of being confirmed appeared slim, and several Republican lawmakers have expressed skepticism about his nomination.
“I would vote no against him, should he come up for a vote,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) said on Bloomberg television on Wednesday. “I know there are a number of other colleagues that have spoken out as well.”
Moore is the second unsuccessful nominee Trump has attempted to place on the Federal Reserve Governors Board. Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, whom Trump said he would nominate, also withdrew him nomination late last month after the same sexual harassment allegations that ended his 2012 campaign resurfaced.
In a blog post on the conservative news site the Western Journal, Cain claimed he chose to withdraw his nomination so he wouldn’t be forced to take a pay cut.
“Without getting too specific about how big a pay cut this would be, let’s just say I’m pretty confident that if your boss told you to take a similar pay cut, you’d tell him where to go,” Cain wrote.
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