Yesterday, Riley Moore attacked a tweet by Senator Elizabeth Warren:

You send this out a day after an elderly Jewish man was killed in California by a Palestinian protester. WTH is going on in your head??? https://t.co/wTEcoo0Nwc

— Riley Moore (@RileyMooreWV) November 7, 2023

Moore, however, says nothing about what Warren tweeted Monday: “Antisemitism in all its forms—is wrong.”

Terrorist attacks against Israel have been followed by a dangerous spike in anti-Jewish incidents. Threats against students, vitriol online, and acts of hate against Jews around the world—antisemitism in all its forms—is wrong.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 6, 2023

Together, these posts suggest that Warren is concerned about attacks on both sides. But Riley Moore is only concerned about scoring points with one side, so he ignores her previous tweet.

There needs, however, to be additional background on Moore's cheap shot; we need to examine his coziness with an antisemitic podcaster, Michael Scheur. Last July, Media Matters’ Eric Hananoki detailed Riley Moore’s appearances on Scheuer’s podcast. Hananoki's article began by describing Scheuer's background:

Scheuer is a QAnon conspiracy theorist who has called for the assassinations of numerous Democrats and said that Jewish people are “disloyal,” “subversive,” and “lethal enemies of Americans” who "must be stopped and then scoured from the continent.”

Hananoki then presented a detailed description of Scheuer’s antisemitic radicalism. (I would encourage readers to check out his complete article here).*

Okay, maybe we should give Moore the benefit of the doubt on Scheuer. Perhaps, Moore didn’t realize the extent of Scheuer antisemitism. No, as Hananoki notes, Moore has been on the program six times and he has frequently praised Scheuer:

He [Moore] told the hosts during their third anniversary show: “It’s a tremendous program, and you all have done so much in three years. So I'm just glad to be able to pop on here periodically and be part of the win.”

The sad part is that, with very few exceptions, West Virginia media have consistently given Moore a free pass on this as well as other questionable activities in his past. (Working for Paul Manafort as a lobbyist for the previous pro-Russian Ukrainian government and his time spent heading a West Virginia dark money lobbying group come quickly to mind. Neither are mentioned on his resume and our state media haven't bothered to ask.) Instead, they usually cover him simply doing his job, portraying him as a benign bureaucrat handing out checks to appreciative local government officials. It's about as easy as a story gets:

West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore stopped by the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Office Thursday afternoon to present the department with an unclaimed property check that came from a gun auction held by Moore’s office.https://t.co/mChdkPhbEx

— The Dominion Post Newspaper (@DominionPostWV) October 20, 2023

Who will ask Moore about this?

*I previously wrote about Hananoki’s coverage of Moore and Scheuer here. My redundancy is on purpose: more than any other WV politician, I find Moore’s radicalism, his lack of ethical standards, and the absence of critical coverage by our state's media organizations to be especially dangerous to our democracy.