Representative Riley Moore: Trump Toady
The behavior of Rep. Riley Moore has been embarrassing – both to his constituents and to himself. Since being elected to represent West Virginia’s Second Congressional District in November 2024, Moore has not had an original thought. Instead, he has let Donald Trump do his thinking, eagerly supporting every misguided and dangerous policy spun out from the Trump chaos. But Moore will learn a hard lesson.
Trump’s “smash and grab” Administration is fueled by the fiction that he was given an unprecedented and powerful mandate for change by the American people. But his nationwide popular vote margin over Harris was only 1.5%, one of the slimmest margins ever. Trump’s electoral vote margin of 86 votes paled in comparison to Obama’s (365) or Reagan’s (525). Trump is President, not because he won a huge number of new voters but because Harris won 6 million fewer votes than Biden.
The real measure of an election victory is called the Determinative Popular Vote – the minimum number of votes in the right states that would have changed the electoral outcome. Had Harris won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — which Trump won by a total of 230,000 votes — then she would have been the victor. That means that only .0015 of voters nationwide made Trump the winner. So Trump has no mandate whatever. He barely squeaked into the presidency.
Nevertheless, in his first 90 days Trump has acted like a king. He has no legislative agenda, governing instead by Executive Order fiat. He has destroyed USAID and the Department of Education, gutted federal employment, threatened the tax status of universities, bullied law firms, challenged the legitimacy of federal courts, attacked the press and undermined cultural institutions. He has proposed to wreck the international trade order with “reciprocal” tariffs and caused the stock market to tank. He has snatched immigrants from the streets and deported them without due process. All this has resulted in Trump’s approval ratings dropping to the lowest point of any modern President in the first 90 days.
Back to Riley Moore. One wishes he would behave in Congress with some restraint and modesty. After all, he is so new he hardly knows where the men’s room is. Despite this, he has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for all things Trump. This is the sin of failing to look before you leap, because Trump’s outrageous policies will hurt West Virginians and there is bound to be a snapback, even here.
As an example, Moore voted to support the recent House budget resolution, saying
President Trump’s landslide victory was a mandate for change, and with passage of today’s budget resolution, House Republicans are unlocking the process needed to deliver on the America First Agenda.
This is the budget that will pave the way for continuing tax cuts for the wealthy, but only if it cuts Medicaid spending. Medicaid is the joint federal and state program for health insurance and medical services for low-income and working people. Over 500,000 West Virginians, nearly 30% of the state’s population, are supported by Medicaid.
On April 2, 2025, Moore joined President Trump at the White House to celebrate “Liberation Day,” the day when reciprocal tariffs were announced on all countries having trade surpluses with the United States, even small islands populated only by penguins. The formula for these tariffs was so childish and unprofessional that the stock and bond markets promptly tanked, eroding the retirement savings of many West Virginians. Several days later Trump folded like a cocktail napkin and “paused” these tariffs.
But the most shameful thing Moore has done is to fly to El Salvador and pose for gloating photos in front of a cell full of deportees hustled illegally out of the United States to avoid interdiction from a federal court. The Charleston Gazette called Moore’s social media post with jailhouse selfies “dehumanizing and a disgrace to the office he holds and the people he represents.”
In its April 19 issue, the Economist magazine reported that Trump already has a negative approval rating in the six swing states he flipped from Biden. As of April 24, only 44% of Americans approve of his conduct in office. In the 2018 midterm elections during Trump’s first term Republicans lost 42 seats and control of the House. Riley Moore remembers 2018 well. That year in a reaction to Trump’s excesses, voters in Jefferson County turned Moore out of the House of Delegates even though he had been picked to become the new House Majority Leader. What’s past is prologue.
