President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser said the White House still backs Stephen Moore for a position on the Federal Reserve Board despite growing criticism over past comments deriding Midwestern cities and women.
“We’re still behind him,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told reporters at the White House on Monday. “No change in our position.”
Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said earlier that the White House was reviewing Moore’s writings and statements but didn’t elaborate. “When we have an update on that front we’ll let you know,” she told reporters at the White House.
The president has come under criticism for selecting two political loyalists for the Fed board, Moore and former Godfather’s Pizza Inc. chief executive Herman Cain. Cain withdrew after decades-old sexual harassment and infidelity allegations against him began to resurface. Moore has come under scrutiny for a range of controversial public remarks, including columns he wrote for National Review more than 15 years ago that disparaged women.
He wrote, for example, that women tennis pros wanted “equal pay for inferior work.” Moore has called the columns a “spoof.”
Moore also took heat for having called Cincinnati and Cleveland the “armpits of America” in a 2014 speech, a comment that risks offending voters in a key state for Trump in his 2020 re-election bid.
Moore, speaking Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” said that while he’s embarrassed by some of the things he wrote in the past, he’s facing a “smear campaign” that includes having his divorce papers from a decade ago unsealed. The focus should be on his economic views and the role he played in advising Trump on policies that have produced strong economic growth, he said.
Moore said Sunday that Ohio is no longer the “armpit of America.”
