TRUMP WILL
President’s too busy to stump in Alabama, White House says
not stump for Moore, aide says.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will not visit Alabama to campaign for Senate candidate Roy Moore before the Dec. 12 special election, White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday.
Sanders told reporters that Trump will not campaign for Moore because “his schedule doesn’t permit” it.
The president last week had held the door open to campaigning for Moore. Trump criticized Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, and made public statements in which he raised doubts about the accounts of women who have accused Moore of sexual misconduct decades ago, when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.
Over the weekend, Trump took to Twitter to criticize Jones, saying that electing him as Alabama’s next senator “would be a disaster” because he would follow the lead of Democratic congressional leaders Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.
“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,” Trump tweeted, with some of the words in capital letters.
Trump has declined to follow the path of other mainstream Republican leaders, who have called on Moore to step aside. Republican senators are considering whether to expel Moore should he win
the seat.
For weeks, accusations that Moore, now 70, sexually molested or assaulted two teens, ages 14 and 16 — and tried to date several others — while he was in his 30s have taken center stage in the Alabama race. Moore denied the allegations of misconduct and said he never dated “underage” women.
On Monday, Moore cast his campaign as a “spiritual battle” against “the immorality of our time,” vowing to “take off the gloves” in the final weeks of the campaign so he can establish a clear contrast with his Democratic opponent.
“I’m a fighter. I don’t hesitate to say that. I’ve been that way my whole life,” Moore told more than 100 supporters in his first public event since Nov. 16. “My opponent will allow our Constitution to be totally undermined and disregarded. And I oppose that.”
To calls of “amen” from the crowd, Moore said the allegations were a plot by his political enemies.
A new television ad by his campaign that debuted Monday described the accusations as “a scheme by liberal Democrats and the Republican establishment to protect their big government trough.” The ad features pictures of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
The issue of what to do about Moore comes as Congress also faces a series of harassment allegations involving current members.
On Monday, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., made his first public appearance at the Capitol since allegations against him surfaced, apologizing to voters, aides and “everyone who has counted on me to be a champion for women.”
In a brief appearance before reporters, Franken stopped short of specifying how his memory differs from four women’s accounts of separate incidents in which he was accused of initiating improper sexual contact.
He said he recalls “differently” one woman’s allegation that he forcibly kissed her but provided no detail, and he said he doesn’t remember three other times that women said he grabbed their buttocks, citing “tens of thousands” of people he meets annually.
“But I feel that you have to respect, you know, women’s experience,” he said.
Franken said he will cooperate with an Ethics Committee investigation of his behavior. He said it will take “a long time for me to regain people’s trust” and that he hoped to begin that process by returning to work.
“I want to be someone who adds something to this conversation,” he said.
The House plans to vote Wednesday on a resolution requiring lawmakers and staff to annually complete anti-harassment training. Its chief sponsors included Reps. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., and Jackie Speier, D-Calif., who has said she was sexually assaulted by a male chief of staff when she was a House aide decades ago. The Senate approved a similar measure earlier this month.
With many lawmakers pushing for more, the House Administration Committee plans to hold a hearing next week on how to strengthen Congress’ processing of harassment allegations. Under the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, complaints have been sent to the obscure Office of Compliance, which requires a lengthy counseling and mediation period and has allowed virtually no public disclosure of cases.
Congress’ procedures drew intensified attention after a report last week by the news website BuzzFeed that the office of Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., paid a woman more than $27,000 under a confidentiality agreement to settle a complaint in 2015 that she was fired from his Washington staff because she rejected his sexual advances. The money came from taxpayers, not Conyers.
Conyers, 88, the House’s longest-serving member, has relinquished his post as top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Ethics Committee is reviewing the case. He has denied the allegations.