With Herman Cain out of Fed contention, focus shifts to Stephen Moore

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump said Monday that Herman Cain, one of his embattled picks for the Federal Reserve Board, has withdrawn his name from consideration, as attention shifted from the two loyalists’ views on economics and monetary policy to their attitudes toward women.

The decision on Cain came as the former pizza chain executive battled old charges of sexual harassment that had halted his 2012 presidential campaign. His withdrawal bows to political reality in a moment when Trump has faced mounting criticism for tapping Trump partisans to join the historically independent Fed. And it moved a spotlight to the other man Trump has said he wants to put on the Fed, his economic adviser Stephen Moore, who faced scrutiny Monday for a series of magazine columns that denigrated women, including his then-wife.

Moore has called the writings jokes, but the criticism suggests that questions of harassment and sexism could prove more consequential for Trump’s nominees than interest rates and other policy issues.

In Moore’s columns, published by the conservative magazine National Review, he complains that women are “sooo malleable” because his then-wife voted for a Democrat, based on a campaign commercial.

In other pieces, Moore says female tennis players “want equal pay for inferior work.” He calls for women to be banned from the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, unless they are as attractive as CBS sports journalist Bonnie Bernstein, who, he writes, “should wear a halter top.”

“Here’s the rule change I propose,” Moore wrote in 2003. “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.”

Bernstein replied on Twitter, “You want halter tops? Hit the club scene. You want hoops knowledge? Try actually listening.”

Moore, who has not been formally nominated for the Fed board, did not respond to a message seeking comment on the writings Monday.

White House officials have insisted in recent weeks that Moore’s nomination was on track, despite controversies over a $75,000 tax lien filed against him by the Internal Revenue Service and a judge finding him in contempt of court several years ago for failing to pay more than $300,000 in past-due child support and alimony.