Over the past week, multiple Republican senators have voiced concern at the prospect of confirming Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve Board, likely because experts say Moore is economically illiterate, and maybe also because of all those misogynistic, transphobic, deeply racist, and generally disturbing opinions he‘s expressed over the years. (All jokes, he says! Violence against women is hilarious, he says!) And yet, as of 10:43 A.M. on Thursday, Moore seemingly believed he was still in the running for the job, telling multiple reporters that he fully expected to be confirmed, and that the White House had told him it was “all in” and “full speed ahead” with his nomination. So the events of the following half hour must have come as something of a surprise!

In a statement following Trump’s tweet, Moore claimed he was withdrawing due to “unrelenting attacks on my character [that] have become untenable for me and my family, and three more months of this would be too hard on us.” In an interview with Bloomberg literally hours earlier, Moore—who once wrote a “parody” about picking up a new mom for his kids, in front of his kids, and reportedly told his children, of having a wife and mistress, “I have two women, and what’s really bad is when they fight over you”—said that he believed he’d win over some Democrats if he advanced to a confirmation hearing with the Senate Banking Committee. He also said he expected the president to formally nominate him for the job within roughly three weeks.

Trump, of course, has a history of making personnel decisions via Twitter. In March 2018, he canned then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via tweet, the same fate that eventually befell former Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Meanwhile, ex-F.B.I. director James Comey reportedly learned of his dismissal from the breaking-news chyrons on cable TV as he addressed agents in the Los Angeles field office.

As for Moore—who on Tuesday tried and failed to defend telling a joke about Trump moving into the White House and “kick[ing] a black family out of public housing” (“That is a joke I always made,” he told Margaret Hoover, somehow digging himself deeper)—he may need to explore a new career path:

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