WASHINGTON
US President Donald
Trump sought Wednesday to distance himself from an embarrassing defeat
in Alabama, saying he had been right all along that Republican senate
candidate Roy Moore could not win.
The
former judge faced damaging accusations he had preyed on teenage girls
as a younger man, but Trump endorsed him anyway in the final stretch of
the campaign for a vacant US Senate seat.
Moore,
now 70, lost the election Tuesday to Democratic candidate Doug Jones, a
stunning upset in a deeply conservative southern state that has not
elected a Democrat to the US Senate in a quarter century.
The
defeat was a blow to Trump as well as to Moore — but in an early
morning tweet Wednesday, the president recalled that he had originally
endorsed Moore's rival in the Republican primary, Luther Strange.
"The
reason I endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily) is
that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I
was right!
"Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!"
In an earlier tweet late Tuesday, Trump congratulated Jones on "a hard fought victory."
"The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win," he said.
Moore has yet to concede the loss, however, calling for a recount.
With
100 percent of Alabama precincts reporting, Jones won 49.9 per cent of
the vote compared to Moore's 48.4 percent, a margin of nearly 21,000
votes out of 1.3 million cast, according to results posted by US media.
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