“In one week, the people of Alabama will head to the polls to choose between an alleged child molester… and a Democrat,” said Trevor Noah. “For them, that’s a real catch-22. Although we are talking about Roy Moore, so it’s technically a catch-14.”
On Tuesday night, The Daily Show host dedicated his longest segment to the tight Alabama Senate race, pitting Republican Roy Moore, who’s been accused of various degrees of sexual misconduct by at least nine women (including two who claimed that he sexually-assaulted them when they were teenagers), and Democrat Doug Jones, best known for prosecuting members of the Ku Klux Klan who killed four black girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
Yes, in addition to his rampant homophobia, Islamophobia, birtherism, and implication that 9/11 happened because America was “godless,” Moore stands accused of serial hebephilia. One woman claims that Moore initiated a sexual encounter with her when she was 14, he 32; locals, including local police, allege that Moore was so predatory toward teenage girls during his days as a thirty-something assistant district attorney that he was banned from the mall in Gadsden, Alabama. Another woman says that when she was 17, Roy Moore called her high school’s principal’s office—pulling her out of trigonometry class—in order to ask her out on a date. He was 30 at the time.
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While the Republican Party initially “did the right thing and abandoned Roy Moore,” according to Noah, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying “I believe the women” and recommending that Moore pull out of the race, and the Republican National Committee pulling funding for Moore’s campaign, they’ve since reversed course. “I’m going to let the people of Alabama make the call,” offered a reluctant McConnell, while the RNC has gone back to providing financial support for Moore.
Today, The Daily Beast reported that President Trump has privately decided that the sexual-assault allegations against Moore are bogus (the president, by the way, stands accused of various degrees of sexual-assault by at least 20 women, and was once accused of rape by his ex-wife, Ivana.)
“It’s so crazy to me that, after all of this, Roy Moore still has supporters,” said Noah. “What kind of person would be so morally degenerate that they would actually back this man?”
The late-night host then cut to video of President Trump in late November saying of Moore’s allegations, “Roy Moore denies it. That’s all I can say. He denies it. And by the way, he totally denies it.”
