Roy Moore campaign press conference goes off the rails, as surrogates rant about accusers and 'fake polls' from Fox News
- Campaign surrogates for Roy Moore, the embattled Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, defended Moore on Tuesday at a fiery press conference.
- Moore strategist Dean Young said Moore's accusers, the news media, and establishment Republicans were making up the allegations against Moore.
- Young said Alabama voters were put there by God to decide the election, which he said would affect not only the country, but the entire world.
Representatives for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore held a bizarre, fiery press conference Tuesday afternoon, in which they sought to discredit allegations against Moore and raged against his political opponents, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic opponent Doug Jones, and the "fake news people" in the media.
Moore's campaign has been beset by sexual misconduct allegations in recent weeks after a number of women said publicly that Moore had pursued relationships or initiated sexual encounters with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Moore has denied the allegations against him and blamed the media and his enemies in the Republican establishment for the backlash against his campaign.
Dean Young, a strategist for Moore's campaign, said in an animated speech on Tuesday that the special election on December 12 will affect the course of the not only the country, but the world. He added that he believed Alabama voters had been put there by God to make the decision.
"The question is, can you be tricked? Can you be tricked? Because all hell is coming to Alabama against Judge Roy Moore," Young said. "Anything they can do, any lie they can make up, any person they can drag up and put in front of a TV camera to say negative things against Judge Moore is coming."
Young went on to urge Alabama voters to contemplate the election over the Thanksgiving holiday.
"I want y'all to talk about it Sunday night after church, and I want y'all to think in your brain - Judge Moore that we've known for 25 years. Are we going to be sold a bill of goods by Mitch McConnell? And the fake news? Are we? Are we that gullible? And the answer's going to be no," Young said.
'Fake polls' from Fox News?
"Fox News can put out their fake polls and everyone else can too, but he's still winning and he's never been losing. Because the people of Alabama don't go for what you're trying to sell," Young said.
He then turned his ire toward Jones, whom he accused of supporting "partial-birth abortion" and "transgenders going into little girls' bathrooms." Young appeared to be referring to statements Jones made last month, saying he would not support legislation that would ban abortion after the 20th week of a woman's pregnancy and criticizing the Trump administration for rescinding Obama-era guidance on transgender students' access to bathrooms and locker rooms in public schools.
"Alabamians, if you've got a teenager that's in the locker room that's a girl and one of these transgender people decides they want to be a girl for the day, well Doug Jones thinks they should be able to go take a shower with them," Young said. "So here's what's going to happen. Judge Moore is going to win."
Another Moore surrogate, Stan Cooke, sought during the press conference to cast doubt on some of the accusations against Moore, including that of Beverly Young Nelson, who has said Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16 in the parking lot of the restaurant where she worked. Cooke repeated the Moore campaign's critiques of Nelson's account, implying that the yearbook message she says Moore wrote for her in 1977 may have been forged.
Cooke also pushed back on a number of reports that have said Moore was banned from a shopping mall in his hometown of Gadsden, Alabama, for harassing teenage girls. Cooke quoted a former operations manager at the Gadsden Mall, who said he was unaware of any ban against Moore.
"Allegations are words, they are not facts. Allegations are words, they are not indictments and they are not charges," Cooke said. "This is an effort by these people - the liberal media, the Republican establishment - to malign the good name of Judge Moore."