Stephen Moore Drops Out Fed Board Race After Sexist Writings, Racist Joke About the Obamas Resurface

Stephen Moore, one of President Donald Trump’s embattled picks to serve on the Federal Reserve Board and his former campaign adviser, withdrew from his candidacy for a spot on the board.

In the letter, Moore blamed “unrelenting attacks on my character” for his reason to drop out, even though in an interview with Bloomberg News just several hours earlier he said he thought he had a good chance of winning the seat.

Trump’s Twitter message confirmed the withdrawal. The president called Moore a “fine person.”

Related Story: Trump’s Fed Reserve Board Pick Stephen Moore Under Fire for Sexist Comments on Women in Sports

But even Republicans couldn’t get behind Moore, whose writings back in the early 2000s belittled and degraded women, including his wife at the time.

Here’s what he wrote about women in sports:

“No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer vendors, no women anything… There is, of course, an exception to this rule. Women are permitted to participate, if and only if, they look like Bonnie Bernstein. The fact that Bonnie knows nothing about basketball is entirely irrelevant.”

As a guest on PBS’ “Firing Line With Margaret Hoover” on Tuesday, Moore tried to defend the following racist joke he made about a fake headline and the Obamas in 2016:

“There’s that great cartoon going along that [shows] the 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!”

The New York Times reports that in an appearance on C-SPAN in 2000, Moore argued women earning more than men was leading to a decline in the American family.

“It’s not a good thing that Black women are making more than Black men today,” he said. “In fact, the male needs to be the breadwinner of the family, and one of the reasons I think you’ve seen the decline of the family, not just in the Black community, but also it’s happening now in the white community as well, is because women are more economically self-sufficient,” he said. “So, I would like to see an increase in Black earnings because Black men have not closed the gap as much as Black women have.”

Moore is also under scrutiny for a $75,000 IRS income tax lien and a messy divorce that included Moore shorting his ex-wife for years on the amount he was supposed to pay her for alimony, according to The Guardian.

A Virginia judge had found Moore in contempt of court in 2012 for reneging on more than $330,000 in settlement, alimony and child support payments to Allison.

Moore even tried to compare his situation to Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was mired in accusations of sexual assault.

“You know, they’re pulling a Kavanaugh against me,” he told a radio interviewer in late April.

Moore refused to acknowledge the weight of his past sexist and insulting articles.

“If it comes down to things I wrote 18 years ago that were impolitic, that I’ve apologized for, that were, you know, insulting, then I’m in trouble,” he told CNBC in an interview April 30.

Trump’s other nomination for another open spot on the board, Herman Cain, also dropped out less than two weeks ago after pushback on his nomination from Republican senators and revived accusations of sexual misconduct.

 

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