Senate hopeful ‘must quit if sex claims true’
DONALD TRUMP has called on a Republican Senate candidate to quit if allegations he had sexual encounters with teenage girls are true.
The president’s spokesman said that while Roy Moore, the party’s firebrand candidate to be Alabama senator, should not be “destroyed” by old allegations, he should go if they are correct. The comment added to a wave of condemnation from senior Republicans after four women told The
Washington Post that Mr Moore pursued them sexually in the Seventies and Eighties when they were between the ages of 14 and 18.
Mr Moore, now 70, refused to step down, denying the claims and blaming the “Obama-clinton Machine’s liberal media lapdogs”.
One supporter of the former state judge and Christian evangelical dismissed the allegations by saying that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was only a teenager when she met Joseph.
Jim Ziegler, the Alabama state auditor, told the Washington Examiner: “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of
Jesus.”
The controversy plunged Republican plans for holding the safe seat into chaos a month before polling day.
Sarah Sanders, the White House spokesman, said: “The president believes that if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step down.”