Trump’s Embattled Federal Reserve Pick Seeks Cover In Brett Kavanaugh

Stephen Moore taunted his ex-wife while cheating on her and has made countless sexist remarks. He thinks it's "character assassination" to bring that up.
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Stephen Moore, President Donald Trump’s intended nominee for the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, isn’t just unqualified because of his dreadful economic record — he also has a history of sexist and offensive remarks about women and the LGBTQ community.

Now Moore is objecting to the very idea that his past comments warrant scrutiny, saying his critics are “pulling a Kavanaugh against me.” Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh nearly lost his confirmation fight last year over allegations of past sexual misconduct and sexual assault.

The embattled Fed candidate likened himself to Kavanaugh in an interview with North Dakota radio station WZFG on Tuesday, calling criticism of his comments “a kind of character assassination.”

In a yearslong series of columns he penned for the National Review that went viral earlier this week after they were unearthed by CNN, Moore repeatedly attacked women in sports, women having the temerity to referee men’s sports, and women demanding equal pay.

There’s also this doozy, wherein Moore effectively defends all the ingredients of sexual assault on college campuses:

Colleges are places for rabble-rousing. For men to lose their boyhood innocence. ... To stay out way too late drinking. And the women seemed to survive just fine. If they were so oppressed and offended by drunken, lustful frat boys, why is it that on Friday nights they showed up in droves in tight skirts to the key parties?

Moore told CNN that they were a “spoof” and meant to be humorous.

His contentious remarks extend beyond his National Review columns, however. In a 2016 column for the Christian Broadcasting Network, he lamented that anyone who doesn’t support same-sex marriage is “chastised as a bigot,” and had previously written for Investors Business Daily that conservatives don’t feel welcome in New York, “where abortion and gay marriage are legal.”

Moore has also publicly aligned himself with several of Trump’s more questionable views, including doubting well-established climate science. Moore once called global warming the “biggest scam of the last two decades” and argued that “to be against fracking is like being against a cure for cancer.”

Moore also came to Trump’s defense over the felonious hush money payment the president made to Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign. Moore attempted to slut-shame Daniels during an appearance on CNN.

The 59-year-old currently serves as a fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank in Washington, where his financial insights have been consistently, laughably wrong. In 2012, Kansas enacted a series of deep tax cuts designed by Moore, who promised an economic windfall; instead, it was a calamity.

In 2011, Moore advised then-presidential candidate Herman Cain on his “9-9-9” tax plan, a plan seemingly copied from the video game SimCity. (Trump also intended to nominate Cain to the Fed, but Cain asked to be removed from consideration this week.)

For a man who’s dedicated his professional life to giving economic advice to others, the state of Moore’s own financial affairs is also concerning. He owes the IRS $75,000 in back taxes (he says bureaucracy at the agency is to blame) and was once held in contempt of court for failing to pay his ex-wife Allison Moore more than $300,000 in alimony, records obtained by The Guardian show.

Moore’s financial decisions aren’t the only red flags from his past.

Court filings offer a peek inside the Moore household in 2009, before the divorce, and before Allison said she had to flee to protect herself from “emotional and psychological abuse.” At the time, Stephen was openly cheating on Allison and taunting her with mementos from his affair.

Per court documents, Stephen left “bills showing extravagant dinners” with the woman whom he was cheating on his wife with in places his wife would see them. He also did this with bills showing gasoline purchases near the woman’s house early in the morning; bills showing an airplane ticket he purchased for her; a printout of directions to the woman’s home; and in one particularly sophomoric display, “A t-shirt [Stephen] bought for [the woman] with a Nike logo that reads, ‘Doing It.’”

Also of note: Moore has repeatedly called for the Federal Reserve to be abolished and advocated a return to the gold standard. Now that he’s up for a seat, however, he’s apparently changed his tune:

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