President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that conservative commentator Stephen Moore withdrew from consideration for the Federal Reserve board.
Moore has not commented on Trump’s announcement.
From The Wall Street Journal:
The withdrawal was a setback for Mr. Trump, who has witnessed the failure of his last two picks for the Fed and for a handful of other key administration jobs. It also represents the latest instance of congressional Republicans publicly signaling their opposition to the president on a high-profile policy issue.More than a half-dozen GOP senators had expressed reservations about his candidacy, citing his comments about women, personal financial issues and views of the Fed among the issues that could make it difficult for him to win confirmation if formally nominated.Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R., S.D.) indicated Thursday that Mr. Moore would face resistance in the Senate if nominated.
The media began character attacks against Moore when Trump wanted to nominate him. They have a tendency to do this with anyone Trump picks for any position.
Journalists wrote about the unsealed divorce complaint from Moore’s ex-wife in 2010. The complaint alleged “adultery, emotional and psychological abuse, and unpaid child-support debts.” It also showed that Moore “owed more than $75,000 in unpaid taxes, penalties and interest to the Internal Revenue Service.”
Moore explained “that the divorce had been settled amicably” and “disputed the IRS’s calculation of the tax debt but said he had paid it, and court records show the case is closed.”
The media also accused him of belittling women due to an old column in National Review about women’s basketball:
Mr. Moore also has faced criticism for columns he wrote for the National Review in the early 2000s seen as belittling to women athletes. “We are being force fed lady hoops. I have never in my life met anyone who actually liked watching women’s basketball,” Mr. Moore wrote in one of the columns. He called it a “travesty” that women were joining men in pickup games and recreational leagues.
Oh give me a break. I’m female. I cannot stand women’s basketball. I don’t like it when I see men and women playing with and against each other in any sport, mainly because the sexes have too many physical differences. I guess I hate my own sex.
In another column in 2014, he disagreed with “a gender pay equality proposal from a Democratic senator.” He said that America’s crisis in wages “isn’t about women’s wages; it’s about men’s wages” since the males “are still the chief breadwinners in most families, and their wages are not moving much at all.”
Is he wrong? I doubt it. The males in relationships of about 95% of the people I know make the most money.
I didn’t like this comment by him:
Shortly after Trump’s November election, Moore said: “There’s that great cartoon going along, that New York Times headline: ‘First thing Donald Trump does as president is kick a black family out of public housing.’ And it has Obama leaving the White House. I mean, I just love that one.”“I shouldn’t have said it,” Moore said Tuesday on PBS’s “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover.”
But still…meh.
Maybe the comments didn’t cause Moore to withdraw. Moore voiced disagreements with the White House about the central bank today:
Hours before withdrawing from consideration for the Federal Reserve board, Stephen Moore was quoted as saying he disagreed with President Donald Trump’s call for the central bank to sharply cut rates.“I’m not so sure I agree with the White House that we should cut rates by an entire percentage point,” Moore told Bloomberg News on Thursday. “I just don’t see the case for that right now.”
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