President Donald Trump’s Federal Reserve pick Stephen Moore expressed regret over a comment he made in 2016 about Trump kicking former President Barack Obama’s family out of “public housing.”
“There’s that great cartoon going along, that The New York Times headline: ‘First thing Donald Trump does as President is kick a black family out of public housing,’” Moore said at a 2016 event shortly after Trump’s election. “And it has Obama leaving the White House. I mean, I just love that one.”
Asked about it Tuesday during an interview with PBS’ “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover,” Moore responded: “I shouldn’t have said it.”
Moore, an economic commentator who served as a Trump campaign adviser in 2016, has come under fire for columns and comments made over the past 25 years, including comments reported by CNN’s KFile disparaging women’s equality and participation in the workforce and especially in sports and the media.
Moore appeared to acknowledge in his PBS interview that his comments may end his chances for confirmation.
“Again, you go back 30 years, you’re going to be able to find clips over and over and over again about me. I have a long paper trail,” he said. “I mean, there’s no question about it, and I say things that are kind of jokes, that if people want to pick them apart, then I probably won’t, you know, get on the Federal Reserve Board.”
Multiple Republican senators have expressed doubts about Moore. On Wednesday, Sen. John Thune, the second-ranking Republican, said there are “ongoing discussions and conversations” between Republicans in the Senate and the administration about Moore’s fate “and we’ll know more about that before long.”
Moore who was formerly a Wall Street Journal editorial board member and CNN contributor, has not yet been formally nominated. He told CNN on Tuesday that he had no plans to withdraw and expects his vetting to be complete as soon as this week.
But Trump’s other controversial Fed pick, Herman Cain, abruptly withdrew from contention in April after the revival of longstanding sexual harassment claims that helped end the restaurant executive’s 2012 Republican presidential bid. Cain, who has denied the allegations, said he was dropping out because he didn’t want to take a pay cut.
CNN’s Ted Barrett and Richard Davis contributed to this report.