How Trump came around to an accused child molester

12/11/2017 05:00 AM EST

Mitch McConnell had publicly disavowed Roy Moore when the Senate majority leader received one of several phone calls from President Donald Trump. McConnell wanted Trump’s help to push Moore out of the Alabama Senate race after he’d been accused of harassing or molesting teenage girls.

Instead, the president’s response left the straight-laced McConnell aghast.

Trump, according to three sources briefed on the discussions, cast doubt on the claims leveled by Moore’s accusers. Who were these women, he asked, and why had they kept quiet for 40 years only to level charges weeks before an election?

Trump’s sentiment — he has also complained privately that the avalanche of charges taking down prominent men is spinning out of control — helps explain the president’s evolving attitude toward Moore over the past three weeks, when he has gone from uncharacteristic silence to a full-throated endorsement of the controversial candidate. The shift has benefited both men, helping the scandal-tarred Moore bounce back from what looked like a probable defeat to become a slight favorite in Tuesday’s special election — and offering the president a chance to claim credit if Moore ekes out a win.

Trump capped his endorsement at a Friday night rally in Pensacola, Florida, just 20 miles from the Alabama border. It was designed to be a crafty sleight-of-hand — a way for Trump to help Moore without venturing directly into Alabama. But by the time Air Force One touched down in the Florida Panhandle, a person close to Trump said, he might as well have been in Mobile or Birmingham. He was all in for the accused child molester.

White House aides advised the president against getting involved in the contest, and his endorsement is a testament to the futility of trying to guide a boss guided by instinct who relishes taunting the political establishment he now runs. That includes not just McConnell but members of his own staff and even his daughter Ivanka, whose harsh words for Moore worked only to push the president in the opposite direction.

In the midst of a two-week swing through Asia when the accusations first dropped, Trump was inherently sympathetic to Moore, an outsider whom the Republican establishment had left for dead. McConnell and Cory Gardner, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, had called already called on him to step aside, and were threatening to expel him from the Senate if he were elected. Both the Republican National Committee and the NRSC severed ties with the Moore campaign.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/11/roy-moore-trump-republicans-288769

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How Trump came around to an accused child molester p2

12/11/2017 05:00 AM EST

Trump had experienced a similar desertion in the summer of 2016 when the infamous “Access Hollywood” take surfaced. He was angered to see the same establishment figures now ditching Moore.

“The president didn’t want to drop him like a hot potato to begin with,” said a senior White House aide.

At the same time, Trump has publicly praised women for speaking up about sexual harassment. The reckoning with the issue that the country is going through, he has said, is a good thing. “I think it’s very, very good for women, and I’m very happy a lot of these things are coming out,” he said in late November.

It was Moore’s appearance on Sean Hannity’s show on Nov. 10, the day after The Washington Post reported that Moore had pursued several teenage girls, including a 14-year-old, while in his 30s, that caused Trump to question his stance. On Fox News, the former state Supreme Court justice would not deny the charges unequivocally.

“If we did go out on dates, then we did,” Moore said of one of his accusers, Debbie Wesson Gibson, who was 17 at the time. “But I do not remember that.”

From Vietnam, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement later that day. The president believes that “if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside,” she said.

For a week, the White House resisted entreaties from McConnell and his aides, who were desperate for the president to make a public statement calling on Moore to step aside. But Vice President Mike Pence, who was the point of contact with Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, along with his chief of staff, Nick Ayers, and political director Bill Stepien, viewed all of the prospective solutions offered by McConnell as wildly implausible. One option was a write-in candidacy by former Sen. Jeff Sessions, who triggered the special election in the first place when he was appointed attorney general.

Ivey, who spoke with Pence at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Austin, Texas, could have thrown Republicans a lifeline by postponing the election. But she refused to budge. During one phone call with Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, Ivey said the election would be on Tuesday, Dec. 12, period.

The White House was firm in its view that it was up to Alabama voters to decide the Moore matter — a line that McConnell would be forced to grudgingly adopt. Trump has always had contempt for McConnell, with whom he has feuded both publicly and privately, but that attitude spread through the White House political operation as McConnell and his team proposed Hail Mary options.

If anything, the Trump advisers came to believe, the Republican leader was hurting his own cause. Alabamians didn’t like being told what to do by outsiders.

McConnell ultimately came around to the White House’s position the week before the election, saying on ABC’s “This Week” that it was up to people in the state to decide the election. But, McConnell added, as he had said previously, that Moore would face an ethics inquiry if he wins.

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