Trump’s Florida rally puts out call next door to boost Alabamian
PENSACOLA, Florida — President Donald Trump on Friday urged voters to elect a Republican Senate candidate in Alabama who has been dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct, warning that America “cannot afford” to have a Democrat win the hard-fought campaign instead.
Trump gave a boost to the campaign of GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore during a raucous campaign rally in the Florida panhandle, near the state line with Alabama.
“We cannot afford — the future of this country cannot afford — to lose the seat,” Trump said, referring to his party’s razor-thin 52-48 advantage in that chamber of Congress.
Trump said Moore’s opponent, Doug Jones, is a “liberal Democrat” who would be “completely controlled” by Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi in the House and Charles Schumer in the Senate.
“He’s their total puppet and everybody knows it,” Trump said during a wide-ranging speech that
included riffs on the U.S. immigration system and the nation’s economic performance since he took office. He touched briefly on the closely watched Senate race that will be decided when voters in next-door Alabama go to the polls Tuesday.
“We need somebody in that Senate seat who will vote for our Make America Great Again agenda, which involves tough on crime, strong on borders, strong on immigration,” Trump continued.
Trump had reinforced his support for Moore earlier Friday by tweeting a similar message.
Moore, who is 70, faces multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, including accusations that he molested two teenage girls and pursued romantic relationships with several others while in his 30s. Moore has denied the allegations.
The White House said the rally was a campaign event for Trump. But the location — so close to the Alabama state line and feeding its television markets — stoked speculation that it was a backdoor way for the president to boost Moore’s campaign without actually setting foot in the state.
“It’s not that he’s not going to Alabama. It’s that he is going to Pensacola,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters on board Air Force One as Trump flew to Florida. “Pensacola is Trump country. This is a part of the state that voted overwhelmingly for the president in 2016. He’ll be traveling back to Florida from time to time, and it’s a key state.”
Shah said the president and White House have made clear that the Moore allegations are “troubling and concerning” and “should be taken seriously.” He also noted that Moore has maintained his innocence, and said that should be considered as well.
“Ultimately his endorsement is about the issues,” Shah said.
Trump tweeted earlier Friday that the “LAST thing the Make America Great Again Agenda needs is a Liberal Democrat in Senate where we have so little margin for victory already.” He also criticized Jones as being “bad on Crime, Life, Border, Vets, Guns & Military.”
Moore tweeted that he agreed with Trump.
“You’re right Mr. President! We can’t Make America Great Again with another radical liberal in the US Senate,” he said. “I look forward to working with you to pass the America First Agenda!”
Trump, who overcame allegations of sexual misconduct to win last year’s presidential election, looked past the accusations against Moore and formally endorsed the former Alabama judge this week for the seat once held by Jeff Sessions, now the U.S. attorney general.
Top Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, had called on Moore to step aside after the allegations were made public.
Friday’s campaign rally was Trump’s first since September, when he went to Alabama to campaign for Sen. Luther Strange.
Strange lost the GOP runoff election to Moore.
Trump’s visit to the Florida panhandle comes in the final days of the Alabama Senate special election campaign. The crowd included some Alabama voters who traveled across the border for the rally.
“These are lies, just malicious lies,” said John Maddalena, head of the south Alabama chapter of “Bikers for Trump.” Maddalena and his wife, Alisha, rode to the Trump rally from their home near Montgomery.
Alisha Maddalena described herself as a “strong woman” who still doesn’t believe Moore’s accusers.
“You let him sit there and pass judgment on people” as a jurist “for 40 years and don’t say anything?” she asked. “You wait until he’s running for the Senate to come up with this? That makes you suspicious.”
“I’m a strong female,” she continued. “If things like that happen to you, you need to come out immediately.”
YEARBOOK NOTATIONS
Moore received an unlikely late-campaign boost earlier Friday from one of his own accusers, who acknowledged that she incorrectly described Moore’s inscription in her high school yearbook.
In an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday, Beverly Young Nelson said she had added notes to what she said was Moore’s inscription to her in her yearbook. In a news conference with attorney Gloria Allred later in the day, Nelson said she stands by her claim that Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16, while she worked as a waitress at the Olde Hickory House restaurant in Gadsden, Ala.
Allred said Friday that Moore did not write several notes at the end of the inscription. That text consists of the location, the date and the initials “D.A.” after the signature that Nelson says is Moore’s. Allred said those notes were added later by Nelson “to remind herself of who Roy Moore was and where and when Mr. Moore signed her yearbook.”
For the Moore campaign, which has been working to raise doubts about multiple accusations that he made sexual advances toward teenage girls when he was in his 30s, the Allred announcement was greeted as a political gift, and the campaign worked to suggest that more falsehoods would be revealed, without describing them specifically.
The Moore campaign repeated its call for Nelson to release her yearbook to an independent analyst so that the handwriting attributed to Moore can be analyzed.
“The truth is out there, and until she releases the yearbook, all we know is that they are not telling the truth,” Phillip Jauregui, a lawyer for the Moore campaign, said at a brief news conference.
The Moore campaign took no questions from reporters.
In her initial statement, Nelson said Moore had written the entire inscription in her yearbook. “He wrote in my yearbook as follows,” Nelson said. “‘To a sweeter and more beautiful girl I could not say Merry Christmas. Christmas 1977. Love Roy Moore, Olde Hickory House.’ And he signed it ‘Roy Moore D.A.’ “
Allred said Friday that an independent forensic handwriting analyst had examined the signature, and the handwriting preceding the signature, and concluded they were written by Moore.
“We did not ask the expert to examine the printing after the cursive writing and signature,” Allred said Friday.
Allred did not say when Nelson wrote the additional words into the yearbook.
Trump taunted Nelson at his rally later Friday.
“Did you see what happened today? You know, the yearbook? Did you see that? There was a little mistake made,” Trump said, shifting to a sing-songy voice. “She started writing things in the yearbook.”
Trump then mentioned Allred, and said, “Anytime you see her, you know something’s gone wrong.”
WRITE-INS POP UP
State election officials meanwhile were laying the groundwork for a larger-than-normal number of write-in votes.
Sculptor Lee Busby, a retired Marine colonel from Tuscaloosa, described himself as a typical Alabama Republican who supports Trump but said he decided to run as a write-in candidate out of frustration.
“I did it because I could not bring myself to pick either of the two binary choices we have as Alabama voters,” he said. “I’m not attracted to the Moore campaign … and I cannot bring myself to cast a vote for the Democratic Party to represent Alabama in the United States Senate.”
Busby isn’t alone, and several other people also are touting themselves as write-in alternatives, including Libertarian Ron Bishop.
At least one write-in vote already has been cast: Sen. Richard Shelby said he wrote in the name of a “distinguished” Republican on an absentee ballot rather than vote for Moore or a Democrat. But there’s no guarantee that any write-in votes will be counted.
Anticipating questions about write-in voting, the secretary of state’s office released a statement saying such votes won’t be counted unless the total number of write-in ballots exceeds the difference between the two leading candidates once other votes are tallied.
Even then, the agency said, write-in votes wouldn’t be counted until the seventh day after the election, when provisional ballots and absentee ballots cast by military personnel and overseas residents are compiled.