Former judge and accused child molester Roy Moore launched a second bid for Senate in Alabama on Thursday afternoon.
During a campaign announcement in Montgomery, Alabama that began with his wife Kayla Moore thanking God for her husband and Moore leading the room in the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, Moore railed against the Republican establishment, the media and local efforts to derail his last campaign against Democrat Doug Jones.
“Can I win? Yes I can win,” he told reporters. “Not only can I win, they know I can, that’s why there’s so much opposition. … I’m not going against President Trump at all. I support President Trump, I vote for President Trump. Will he vote for me? We’ll see.”
Trump, alongside senior Republicans and the GOP fundraising arm, have called on Moore to drop his talk of running, with Trump arguing on Twitter there would be devastating consequences if Moore launched a second bid.
The President’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr., who mocked Moore on Twitter after Trump warned him not to run, called Moore’s suggestion that he wasn’t “going against” Trump “fake news.”
This is pure fake news. I can assure everyone that by running, Roy Moore is going against my father and he’s doing a disservice to all conservatives across the country in the process. https://t.co/pjfDKfoIO0
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 20, 2019
Moore claimed that “never before in the history of our state in the history of our nation has there been such an outcry of opposition and favoritism” about whether a candidate intended to jump into a race. He denounced claims that he molested teen girls when he was in his 30s as “false claims, false information.”
Moore suggested the people of Alabama where “angry” after now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh survived a nomination to SCOTUS amid sexual assault allegations when Moore didn’t. He cited that as one of several reasons why he’s decided to run.
When asked what he intends to do differently in this second bid for Senate — after a devastating loss in 2017 that handed the Senate seat to a Democrat for the first time in a quarter century — Moore said: “I would like to make more personal contact with people.”
