If Donald Trump has his way, Stephen Moore would fill an open seat on the Federal Reserve. Moore is a partisan, political operative best known for defending the president on CNN and as ormer op-ed writer for the Wall Street Journal. His nomination hasn’t exactly been making big news. After all, this may seem like a low-profile position in terms of the hierarchy of the Trump administration. But Washington Post writer Catherine Rampell says the impact of this position should not be underestimated.
President Trump has made a lot of ill-advised nominations. But perhaps no single choice could inflict more long-term damage than the one he announced Friday: Stephen Moore, Trump’s pick to join the Federal Reserve Board.
Rampell adds:
A newspaper banned him from its pages because of his struggles in getting basic statistics right. During the dozens of times I’ve debated him on TV, he has persistently misstated easily Google-able facts. These include whether the country is experiencing deflation, whether Canada’s tariffs are “twice as high as” ours, and whether the Fed predicted that Trump would crash the stock market. (Nope, nope, and huh? )
Quartz compiled some of the criticism Moore is getting:
The news has been met with a heady combination of derision, bafflement, and general hullaballoo, with Moore variously described as “a loyalist, not an expert”; a “famous idiot”; and the “living embodiment of the sucking intellectual void at the core of conservative economics.” At best, it’s a rogue choice for Trump; at worst, utterly feckless.
Moore himself seems confused about the nomination saying, “It’s hard for me to say even what my role will be there.”
While most of Trump’s nominees have sailed through the Senate, Marketwatch say Moore’s confirmation might not be swift.
Filling a vacancy on the Fed board might not be a high priority of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell.
“As the clock ticks closer to 2020, McConnell will surely continue to prioritize spending Senate floor time filling vacant federal judgeships with young conservatives for lifetime appointments on the bench,” she said.
Other experts said they thought Moore would eventually be confirmed.