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Trump economic adviser: Why can't everyone just wear a 'space outfit'?

Conservative economist Stephen Moore, a member of Trump’s task force to reopen the economy, floated a novel idea to get Americans back to work amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Emily Singer - April 23, 2020
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Stephen Moore

A member of Donald Trump’s task force to reopen the American economy suggested putting every American in a “space outfit” to safely get back to work.

“I was thinking this morning, and this is just kind of a thought experiment because I was thinking about this — why don’t we just put everybody in a space outfit or something like that? No. Seriously,” conservative economist Stephen Moore said in an interview with the New York Times.

When the reporter who conducted the interview noted that the United States doesn’t have enough space outfits for hundreds of millions of Americans, Moore laughed.

“I mean, just thinking out loud, and maybe this is a crazy idea, but instead of just locking down the economy, putting everybody in a kind of — you’re right. You have to make 200 million of these, but it wouldn’t have cost $3 trillion to do that,” he responded. “And you can have for months people just walking around in these kind of — I mean, I was looking online, and there are all these kinds of suits that they’re building now that you’re not exposed and your breath — kind of ventilator.”

Moore is known for making absurd and incendiary comments.

He once called unemployment insurance — which Congress just expanded and made more generous in the wake of the coronavirus-fueled economic fallout — “paid vacation.

He joked about using a picture of Hillary Clinton’s face as a bullseye when he potty trained his son. And he said he scared his sons out of becoming a Democrat by taping gruesome photo’s of Saddam Hussein’s sons mangled dead corpses along with the words “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO KIDS THAT GROW UP TO BE DEMOCRATS.”

More also joked about banning women from sports, and called cities in Ohio the “armpits of America.

Despite Moore’s record, Trump said last year that he wanted to nominate Moore for a position on the Federal Reserve board.

However, even Senate Republicans were against the appointment. And after months of bad headlines, Trump was forced to abandon Moore’s nomination.

A year later, Trump did bring Moore into his administration as a member of his task force to reopen the economy.

And Moore is still causing controversy, helping to organize the unpopular protests calling for governors to reopen the economy before experts say it’s safe to do so, according to the New York Times.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.


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