Trump Formally Endorses Roy Moore Despite Molestation Allegations
President Trump has formally endorsed an accused child molester for the United States Senate.
Following up on statements he made shortly before Thanksgiving, President Donald Trump formally endorsed the candidacy of Roy Moore, who has been accused by at least nine women of either approaching them for dates when they were teenagers or, in two cases, what would likely amount to sexual assault under applicable law:
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday offered a strong endorsement of Roy S. Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama embroiled in accusations that he had inappropriate sexual relations with underage girls.
While many Republicans called for Mr. Moore to drop out of the race after several women came out with their stories, Mr. Trump has defended him, saying that Mr. Moore denied the accounts and deserved to be heard.
In a statement, the White House said that Mr. Trump and Mr. Moore spoke on the phone and that the president endorsed Mr. Moore’s campaign.
“The President had a positive call with Judge Roy Moore during which they discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and the President endorsed Judge Moore’s campaign,” the statement said.
Mr. Moore wrote about the endorsement on Twitter.
On Twitter earlier on Monday, Mr. Trump described why Mr. Moore had to win: “We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more.”
Mr. Moore, a former state Supreme Court judge, has been accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl and of sexually assaulting another teenager when he was a prosecutor in his 30s. He has denied any sexual misconduct, and rejected all calls to quit the race.
“Thankful for President Trump’s support,” Mr. Moore said in another Twitter post on Monday
Mr. Moore’s wife, Kayla, posted an update to her Facebook account on Monday morning, thanking the president as well.
“Judge Moore just got off the phone with President Trump-we have his full support! Thank you Mr. President! Let’s MAGA!” Ms. Moore wrote, referring to Mr. Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
The fight over the highly contested Senate seat, which became vacant when Mr. Trump tapped Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general, comes at a time when sexual misconduct has become a national discussion.
(…)
Mr. Trump has not said whether he would travel to Alabama and campaign for Mr. Moore. The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said last week that Mr. Trump was “not planning any trip to Alabama at this time” and that his schedule did not allow such a trip before the election.
However, the president is expected to attend a rally in Pensacola, Fla., on Friday, which is in the Mobile, Ala. media market. This would allow Mr. Trump to help get the vote out for Mr. Moore without setting foot in Alabama.
Here are the Tweets from both Trump and Moore regarding the endorsement:
Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017
Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders…& so much more. Look at your 401-k’s since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017
“Go get ’em, Roy!” – President Trump
Just got off the phone with President Trump who offered his full support and said he needs a fighter to help him in the US Senate.
I look forward to fighting alongside the President to #MAGA!
— Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) December 4, 2017
Given Trump’s previous statement in support of Moore, this formal endorsement is hardly surprising. Before he departed Washington for the Thanksgiving weekend, Trump spoke to reporters outside the White House and said that Moore would be a better Senator than Doug Jones, who he described as “weak on crime” notwithstanding the fact that Jones had formerly served as United States Attorney during which time he successfully prosecuted two men responsible for the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that resulted in the deaths of four African-American girls under the age ten. With respect to the sexual misconduct charges that had been leveled against Moore over the preceding weeks, Trump said merely that Moore had denied those allegations, as if that denial alone was sufficient to answer the questions that remain hanging over the candidate and the campaign. These comments came just days after White House advise Kellyanne Conway had already said that Moore would be a reliably Republican vote on tax reform and other issues. Additionally, even while he was campaigning for Senator Luther Strange prior to the runoff election in September, Trump suggested that Moore would be an acceptable nominee as well and that he could be back in Alabama campaigning for him. That statement, of course, came well before the allegations against Moore became pubic, but at the time many observers noted that Trump had effectively under the candidate he was supposedly endorsing and basically gave Trump’s own supporters permission to ignore his endorsement and vote for Moore in the upcoming runoff. Moore, of course, won that election quite handily.
As I noted on Twitter after Trump’s pre-Thanksgiving comments, of all the disgusting and outrageous things that Donald Trump has done as a man, as a so-called “celebrity,” as a candidate for President, and as President, this is without question the most disgusting. As far as Trump is concerned, the fact that Moore stands accused of serious sexual misconduct toward teenage girls is irrelevant, as is the question of whether or not he actually committed these offenses. All that matters is that Moore is a Republican who will, supposedly be a reliable vote in favor of the President’s agenda. This is not dissimilar from the logic utilized by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said yesterday that whether or not Moore becomes a Senator is something he’ll leave up to the people of Alabama, a clear signal that he has likely abandoned any effort to either prevent Moore from being seated if he wins or expelling him from the Senate.
Moreover, Trump’s comments about Moore’s Democratic nominee Doug Jones are complete nonsense. here’s nothing in Jones’s platform that can be called “soft on crime,” for example, to show that he is anything but tough on crime, as his record as U.S. Attorney shows. Additionally, as Jones’s own campaign platform shows, his policy positions on issues like crime are basically mainstream and arguably somewhat to the right of the rest of the Democratic Party, which is understandable given that he’s from Alabama. In any case, the President is essentially saying that a child molester is more acceptable than a moderate Democrat. I’ll leave it for the reader to draw their own conclusions from that.
Trump and Moore have issued a joint statement reflecting their political philosophies:
“Grab ’em by the pussy when they’re underage.”
Trump has admitted–gleefully–to ogling nude and semi-nude teenaged girls at one of his own “beauty pageants.” (The best part, for him, was that they couldn’t keep him out of the dressing room, as he said.) He also admitted–again, gleefully–to slobbering over Paris Hilton–when she was all of twelve. He’s been credibly accused of harassing at least sixteen other women.
Of course he thinks Moore is his bro.
But…I believe part of his full-throated endorsement of Moore today is due to the fact that Moore is now pretty much projected to win. And Donald Trump never backs losers. Right? He said Ed Gillespie would have won in Virginia if he’d “embraced” Trump.
Trust me: If Moore wins on Dec. 12, Trump will be on Twitter at 4 a.m. on Dec. 13 raving about how Moore owes the win to him, Donald Trump.
It’s enough to make you puke.
The GOP is really good at saying something like Crooked Hillary and getting it to stick,so we need to get a saying like Molestor Moore to stick even after he is elected to the Senate (which at this point we all know is going to happen).
I have to say that while the GOP wants to put Roy Moore’s past down a memory hole, we need to make sure the general public continues to think of Roy Moore as a wannabe child molestor for the remainder of his life (Hillary will have Benghazi/Emails dogging her forever, so lets do the same to Roy Moore).
This is just so incredibly disgusting. All of it. The voters of Alabama especially.
People are saying the accusers aren’t believable when Moore MARRIED a woman he STATES he first remembers setting eyes on when she was a SOPHOMORE IN HIGH SCHOOL.
At this point I hope there is a God and that she is calculating ratings based solely on this sort of thing. BARF.
@CSK:
I was just about to say the same thing. Moore and Trump are birds of a feather.
@Jen:
Indeed. One wonders why Moore, aged 29-30, was attending a dance recital performed by 14-15-year-olds to whom he wasn’t related. Usually even the girls’ fathers have to be dragged to those things. Yet there was ole Roy, johnny-on-the-spot to ogle a pack of scantly clad barely post-pubescent females.
I’m sure he was just seeking to burnish up his dance aesthetics, aren’t you?
@CSK:
Roy Moore is G.O.B. Bluth, basically.
@inhumans99:..so we need to get a saying like Molestor Moore to stick…
President Pud…Sump Pump Trump…
what else do you need?
Bill Clinton was publicly accused of being a rapist in 1999, an accusation credible enough that Tim Russert put it on TV and which I’m not sure Bill Clinton has ever personally refuted.
How many standing ovations did Bill Clinton get at the 2000 Democratic National Convention? Why did Donald Trump have to be the one to bring the subject back up in 2016?
And where on the moral outrage scale does the continued normalization around here of George W. Bush rank? He failed to defend this nation from the worst terrorist attack in our history, got hundreds of thousands of people killed in a foreign policy disaster that’s still going strong nine years after he left office, authorized the torture of prisoners, and spied on Americans without warrants.
It should have been impossible for Donald Trump to win the Presidency. It should be even more impossible for him to be re-elected. But the former happened and the latter may as well, largely thank to the childish denial of just how messed up things had gotten before Donald Trump rode down that golden escalator.
Mike
@MBunge:..before Donald Trump rode down that golden escalator.
You are truly a deluded human being!
If it wasn’t obvious before, somehow, let’s be clear: The Republican party is without principles. Period.
Republicans now are completely aware that the Republican party is the party of child molesters. It is the party of rapists and racists. It is the party of tiki torches and corporate welfare. Republican voters and the Republican party have zero ethics – they seek to win at all costs, including the literal destruction of everything America stands for.
If you voted for a Republican in the past 18 months then you are a part of this nihilism, and the destruction of America under this immoral regime is your fault. Full stop.
I will not respect your opinion, instead, I will resist you with every fiber in my being. I am not alone, the majority of the country does not stand for this. Republicans cannot cheat their way to victory forever.
@CSK:
That’s for sure, I know I have to get dragged there. But if the other fathers and I saw a middle aged guy hanging around looking for a future wife onstage, we might have words with him.
@MBunge:
Bunge, you are again defending child molestation.
It can only leave me thinking about how you treat teenage girls, yourself…or maybe you admire Moore because he actually did it, and you only fantasize about it.
It’s true that the Republican party is an organization of child molesters, and people who support child molesters.
But it’s not the only way they abuse children.
We’ve just seen with their recent votes that they are willing to spend a trillion dollars in deficit-financed tax cuts, but “don’t have any money” for children’s health care.
Talk about morally bankrupt….
Oh. Dear. Gawd.
On CNN, Moore’s spokesperson Janet Porter defended Moore by saying that many girls in Alabama were not molested by Moore:”There’s a whole group of non-accusers.”
I did not make this up. I couldn’t make it up.
This is a defense? Does this moron realize she just gave credence to the accusers?
Hitler: “Well, you have to understand that I didn’t kill all the Jews.”
My daughter wasn’t into dance, but played soccer, but I imagine dance recitals and soccer matches are similar in that the spectators tend to be parents, siblings too young to leave at home alone, and the occasional grandparent. In the later teenaged years you start to get their same-aged friends too. But if a middle aged man with no familial connection started hanging around the soccer field, we would have certainly challenged him and probably called the police and give them his license plate number and description. And in Moore’s case it sounds like this happened at the mall at least – a number of people in law enforcement and mall security have testified that the word was put out to run this guy off.
I’m more interested in the HS Principal. What was he doing letting Moore lurk around these recitals? And why in gods name was did he respond to a 35 year old man calling into the high school office and asking if he could talk to a 16 year old unrelated girl by pulling her out of class and putting her on the phone to Moore? There is more to this guy than has come out so far. He sounds like another one of these pervs that sucker the religious into covering up for him. The fact that he was a principle at a HS is scary.
@CSK: @CSK: :”There’s a whole group of non-accusers.”
Literally speaking, she’s right. I think Doug Jones should run an ad with her quote, and then say that Roy Moore’s spokesperson believes he should be elected because he only molested 10 out of a potential 100,000 underage girls. That shows him to be a man of restraint.
@SenyorDave:
He could run it alongside the ad he’s running in which he quotes Ivanka Trump saying that child molesters belong in hell.
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
Depraved people are generally defended by depraved people. There’s only one class of person who is not appalled by the idea of a 30 year-old man shoving an underage girl’s face into his crotch, and that, as you suggest, is the group of people who’d like to do the same themselves.
@michael reynolds: You are spot on. This is why defenses that presuppose an image problem rather than co-criminality slways tick me off. So people say these Evangelical pastors are sending the wrong message when it is more likely that they defend the perv because they are pervs themselves. We saw this with the Catholic Church where article after article, op-ed after op-ed talked about how the bishops and the popes weren’t sending out a strong enough message or where sending the wrong impression that they did’t Take these charges seriously enough. Bullsh*t. The most likely reason these people enabled child molesters is because they were child molesters themselves.
I was thinking about this a bit more last night after talking to a relative who’s a Trump supporter. And the thing I realized is that this whole thing should have been disqualifying for Moore even if the accusations were not true. The way he has responded — massive lies, disparagement of the victims, promulgation of conspiracy theories — has shown him to be unfit for office. He’s been caught in lie after lie on this and continue to assert that it’s all a conspiracy of homosexuals.
When Bill Clinton was impeached, it was for the lie, not the intern poking. Moore’s lies and evasions should be equally disqualifying.
A bit long, but something I posted on another site:
Republicans just went all in for Roy Moore, the molester of 14 year old girls. Evangelicals were already there. What does this mean for the future of those institutions?
Think about the generation that is currently forming their political and social viewpoints. For centuries, the overriding assumption in this country has been that minorities are thuggish, incurious, lazy, driven by emotion rather than reason, have poor self control, and can’t stop themselves from a downward spiral because they are slaves to their crudest impulse. This is all hogwash, but my point is that it was a default perception that every successful minority had to overcome. We’ve now had 8 years of a cool, calm and collected thinker in the White House, a minority, followed by 10 months of an old white man who is thuggish, incurious, lazy… well you get the idea. This is the template that anyone over 15 or 16 is going to have as their default.
On the Republican Party side, since St. Ronnie and his Apostle Jerry Falwell, the default assumption is that the Party is fiscally responsible, will protect America from its enemies, will champion moral causes, are champions of the working class etc. But any fresh-eyed observer knows this was all crap. Again, their default perspective will have shifted.
And on the religious side, whoa. Let’s just say that the more times a day some phony says “Jesus” the more likely they are to be a supporter of a pussy grabbing racist thug and his child molesting pervert in Alabama.
This shift in perception will feed upon itself. Decent people will move away from the Republicans, the Evangelicals and all the other Christian phonies. And by rallying around the decadent and immoral, the thuggish and the stupid, by actively defending them and promoting them, those institutions will attract the perverts, the liars and the immoral.
Don’t get me wrong. As far as I know there is nothing in, say, Evangelical Christianity itself that would make someone more immoral, rather than less. But any institution that becomes known for sheltering wrong doers becomes attractive to other wrong doers. And, for example, middle aged men whose primary goal in life is to chase after young teenaged girls or boys (or worse) will have no moral qualms about wrapping themselves in the cloak of Evangelism or Republicanism or whatever else they feel will have the suckers defending them when they get caught.
Doug Jones just took the gloves off…
https://www.thedailybeast.com/doug-jones-tears-into-roy-moore-men-who-hurt-little-girls-should-go-to-jail
@Hal_10000: One would have thought that being TWICE removed as Chief Justice from Alabama’s Supreme Court for ignoring orders from higher courts, stating that homosexuality should be illegal, and a whole host of other things would have been disqualifying.
I’m honestly at a loss. I will admit I just do not understand why blind partisanship is so important to Alabama voters that this is even a race.
I can understand someone saying “He’s disgusting, but the alternative is someone who is pro-choice, so lesser of two evils… ick”. I can even respect someone who votes that way — life is filled with pragmatic and unpleasant compromises.
I still cannot understand those who minimize this man’s offenses and try to pretend that they are normal and acceptable — he spent his thirties grooming and pursuing children. 14 year olds. Which I suppose it better than 8 year olds? I guess.
I think it hurts America when people justify this, or the similarly creepy and abusive behavior of Donald Trump. It’s a turning away from reality, or worse.