Donald Trump blow as Democrat Doug Jones beats 'groping' judge Roy Moore

David Gardner13 December 2017
WEST END FINAL

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Donald Trump was dealt a blow today by voters who turned their back on scandal-scarred Republican Roy Moore to elect a Democrat for the US Senate.

The upset is the first time a Republican has been defeated in a Senate race in Alabama in a generation.

Mr Trump supported Mr Moore even after he was accused of sexually assaulting girls.

He denied the claims and defied pressure from his party leaders to stand down.

US President Donald Trump at a rally in Florida earlier this week
Getty Images

The Democrat victory in a state where Mr Trump himself triumphed by 28 points in last year’s presidential election shaves the Republican majority in the Senate down to a single seat, jeopardising the president’s hopes of pushing his agenda through Congress.

Roy Moore rides his horse to cast his vote at the polling station
Getty Images North America

Mr Trump tweeted his congratulations to Mr Moore’s Democrat rival Doug Jones.

He added: “The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!”

Biggest loser is man sitting in the Oval Office

Robert Moore: Letter from Alabama

The supporters of Roy Moore stood in shock. This state in the Deep South — one of the most conservative in the nation — had elected a Democrat.

Instead of celebrating, as they had a year ago with the election of Donald Trump, anti-establishment Republicans stared at the stage, sang patriotic songs and then repeatedly prayed. One woman was in tears, telling me America would go to hell, since it had turned its back on Judge Moore and morality.

Roy Moore is no ordinary politician. The former Alabama chief justice is a radical evangelical conservative, holding hostile views on gay and transgender rights, and has suggested that the country was a happier place during the era of slavery. The thought of him as a senator appalled mainstream Republicans and Democrats. But the latter should be nervous. Moore lost because he self-destructed, not because Alabama has adopted a liberal agenda. 

For Trump, this is a moment of acute danger. An inquiry is digging ever deeper into claims of collusion with Russia by his campaign team. Now Alabama, which voted for him by a 28-point margin, has turned its back on his candidate. The president and Moore are both facing allegations of sexual assault. Trump has survived them so far, but the earthquake overnight must have been deeply uncomfortable viewing from the White House.  

America has been convulsed by both populism and sexual scandal over the past year. They collided in Alabama and the big loser was not here, but in the Oval Office.

Robert Moore is the ITV News Washington Correspondent

Mr Trump was reportedly persuaded by his former White House strategist Steve Bannon to endorse Mr Moore, 70, a former chief justice of the supreme court of Alabama.

During a polarising campaign, nine women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against him dating back to the late Seventies and early Eighties.

The Washington Post reported last month that Mr Moore, while a lawyer in his thirties, had made sexual overtures to four teenagers, one of whom was 14 at the time.

Doug Jones' victory will reduce the Republican majority in the US Senate to 51-49
AP

Mr Jones, 63, a lawyer best known for prosecuting Ku Klux Klansmen behind the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, defeated Mr Moore by 50 to 48 per cent of the vote, with 99 per cent of precincts reporting.

There were just under 21,000 votes separating the winner and the loser out of 1.3 million cast.

Moments after the race was called for his opponent, Mr Moore told supporters in the state capital Montgomery: “Realise when the vote is this close, then it’s not over.”

Mr Jones targeted black voters and sought support from whites disenchanted with the Trump administration.

Quoting Martin Luther King, he said today: “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. In this time, in this place, you helped bend that moral arc a little closer to that justice.”

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