Herman Cain claims he chose Fox Business over the Fed

Herman Cain here.

Those rumors about why the 2012 GOP presidential candidate dropped out of the running to be President Trump's next Federal Reserve Board nominee? They're not true, and Cain is the "only source you need" to get the real story, he writes in an op-ed for the conservative Western Journal published Monday.

While Cain hadn't even been nominated for a Fed spot, Trump tweeted Monday that his "friend Herman Cain" had "asked me not to nominate him for a seat." It seemed reasonable, seeing as enough Senate Republicans had already said they'd vote against Cain to doom his nomination. There's also the fact that sexual misconduct allegations forced Cain out of the 2012 presidential race, though he has denied those allegations.

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But amid these reasonable explanations surrounding Cain's withdrawal, Cain wants to assure you that "Twitter wasn't inside my mind over the course of the past weekend," he wrote in his op-ed. Cain was more worried about divesting from his business interests, cutting his radio show and Fox Business appearances, and taking sizable pay cut in the process, he said.

Of course, Cain "did like the idea of serving on the Fed," he enthusiastically continued. Yet he wondered if he'd "be giving up too much influence to get a little bit of policy impact," Cain wrote — he reaches "close to 4 million people a month" with his "current media activities," after all. And after thinking, praying, and even drafting a now-discarded op-ed about why he wanted to continue pursuing the nomination, Cain ultimately decided to withdraw.

Read Cain's whole blog post — and answer his question of "Did Herman do the right thing?" — at The Western Journal.