After weeks of tacit support, President Donald Trump has explicitly called for Alabamans to elect Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has eight allegations of child molestation and assault and inappropriate sexual behavior against him.
President Donald Trump endorses accused child molester Roy Moore
“We will need his vote”: Trump tweets that Republicans can’t afford another Democrat in the Senate.
Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images
“Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama,” Trump tweeted Monday morning.
Moore is facing one of the toughest races for Republicans in recent years — polls have him with an edge, but he is running neck and neck with Democrat Doug Jones.
Perhaps worried about losing a seat with a bare two-vote majority in the Senate, Trump has hinted support of Moore in past weeks. He previously told reporters that Republicans “don’t need a liberal person in there,” referring to the Senate, and pressed that Moore denies all allegations. Moore tweeted that the president called him Monday to offer “full support.”
Moore has been accused of pursuing and assaulting 14- to 18-year-old women while he was in his 30s, in addition to sexually assaulting a 28-year-old woman. The former Alabama judge has aggressively denied that accusation, and tried to discount the stories.
In addition to being accused of child molestation, Moore has questioned Rep. Keith Ellison’s (D-MN) standing in government for being a Muslim, said he believes homosexuality should be illegal, and was twice removed from his seat on Alabama’s top court.
The White House has said Trump won’t campaign for Moore in Alabama, but as Vox’s Emily Stewart explained, the president is “planning a rally right near the Alabama border ahead of the election that looks an awful lot like support for the candidate. Trump will appear at a campaign-style rally in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday, December 8 — 20 miles from the Alabama border, four days before the election.”
Trump, who at the time of his own election faced 17 allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior, has himself benefited from the Republican Party putting politics ahead of any moral accountability.
The national Republican fundraising arm has pulled financial support from Moore’s campaign. Current Republican senators have a more complicated relationship with Moore — they supported him until the allegations of child molestation. With the news, many disavowed his candidacy, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said he believed Moore’s accusers and that the candidate should step aside.
McConnell has now walked back his strongest condemnations of Moore, saying it’s up to Alabama voters to decide.
“The people of Alabama are going to decide a week from Tuesday who they want to send to the Senate,” McConnell said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday. “It’s really up to them. It’s been a pretty robust campaign with a lot of people weighing in. The president and I, of course, supported somebody different earlier in the process. But in the end, the voters of Alabama will make their choice.”
It was reported that McConnell was investigating options to oust Moore, from attempting to trigger another special election to finding another write-in candidate.
None of those ideas have panned out, and it appears as though Republicans, desperate to keep their slim Senate majority, are accepting the prospect of Moore coming to the US Senate. The election is on December 12.
If Moore is elected, Republican senators say he will face a full ethics investigation in Congress.
By Dominique Matti
By Tara Isabella Burton
