Trump effectively endorsed Roy Moore last week. But he won't campaign for him.

(Image credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

published 27 November 2017

The White House announced Monday that President Trump will not campaign on behalf of Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, The Associated Press reported. Although the White House initially avoided taking a stance on Moore's alleged sexual misconduct, President Trump said last week that Moore "totally denies" the allegations that he harassed or groped several underage girls in the 1970s, and then bashed Moore's Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, before telling reporters that he would let them know "next week" if he would campaign on Moore's behalf.

The White House has stood mostly alone in its tepid support for Moore, who has been abandoned by much of the Republican Party. After White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox & Friends and said that Moore's support for tax reform made him preferable to Jones, the Moore campaign touted Conway's quasi-endorsement of Moore as implicit proof that the White House supported their candidate.

While the president has reportedly been urged by former chief strategist Stephen Bannon to not abandon Moore, his own daughter recently said — much to the president's apparent frustration — that "there's a special place in hell for people who prey on children." While Ivanka Trump has largely been unable to make any tangible impact on her father's decision making, she can at least count her father not actively campaigning for Moore as a minor victory.

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Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.

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