Trump Stops Pretending and Endorses Roy Moore for Senate

First, he dodged the issue for days by refusing to answer questions about accused sexual predator Roy Moore. Then, he sent White House staff out to distract, delay, and eventually say the decision over the upcoming Senate election was up to Alabama voters. Now, President Donald Trump, the “pussy–grabber–in–chief,” is just saying, Fuck it. I endorse an accused child molester over a Democrat.

On Sunday, Trump tweeted what essentially amounts to an endorsement of Moore in the Dec. 12 election for Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ vacant U.S. Senate seat. This follows several women coming forward to accuse Moore of varying degrees of sexual harassment and assault, with some saying they were as young as 14 and 16 when Moore, then in his 30s, allegedly assaulted them.

Moore, now 70, continues to deny all of the allegations against him, saying they are politically motivated, a defense that has been echoed by fellow AL Republicans and widely condemned by the rest of the nation—except for the president of the United States, that is.

“The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES TAXES TO THE SKY. Jones would be a disaster!” Trump tweeted.

This is similar to what Trump said last Tuesday, when he first spoke about Moore before heading to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “We don’t need somebody who is soft on crime like Jones,” Trump had said.

It is a strange line to continue repeating, considering Democratic challenger Doug Jones is actually not soft on crime, having studied at Cumberland Law School, then working as staff counsel to Sen. Howell Heflin, and then as a prosecutor and a private defense attorney, according to his bio.

He then served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, during which he helped convict two former Klansmen of the murder of four young African American girls in a bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church.

Referring to another incident, the bombing of a Birmingham women’s clinic, Jones writes, “The image of a bombed building and body of a police officer will remain with me for the rest of my life.”

Shortly after sending his first endorsement tweet, Trump apparently felt the need to clarify, sending a second one reminding everyone that he had helped tank primary candidate Luther Strange’s campaign by endorsing him, although that’s not exactly how Trump remembers it:

Sadly, Moore has a solid shot of actually winning the Senate seat, supported by AL Republicans who clearly don’t care about child abuse. But not everything is rosy in Camp Moore. Earlier this week, his communications director, John Rogers, resigned.

And if Trump’s endorsement plays out like it did for Luther Strange, it could actually hurt Moore, not help him.

As political operative David Urban, a lobbyist who helped get Trump elected, told CNN, if Moore makes it to the Senate, will be “an anchor on the Republican brand.”