“A lot of Republicans feel differently, they're happy with the way it turned out, but I would have, as the leader of the party, I would have liked to have had the seat,” President Donald Trump said. | Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images Trump: Unlike some Republicans, I wish Roy Moore won

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would have liked to see Republicans keep control of the Alabama Senate seat won Tuesday by Democrat Doug Jones, but acknowledged not everyone in the GOP shared his disappointment.

“A lot of Republicans feel differently, they're happy with the way it turned out, but I would have, as the leader of the party, I would have liked to have had the seat,” Trump said Wednesday at the White House. “I want to endorse the people that are running.”


Jones’s win in Tuesday’s special election was an upset by almost any measure, with Alabamians electing a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in 25 years. His Trump-endorsed opponent was former Alabama Supreme Court chief judge Roy Moore, who was accused after securing the GOP nomination of sexually molesting and assaulting girls as young as 14 when he was in his 30s.

Trump had initially endorsed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), appointed on an interim basis last winter to replace Jeff Sessions, who had resigned to become attorney general. Moore beat Strange handily in the state’s Republican primary and Trump, after initially distancing himself from Moore in the immediate aftermath of the allegations, wound up offering a full-throated endorsement.

Some prominent Republicans refused to get on board with Moore’s campaign. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) previously donated to Jones’s campaign, writing “country over party” on the memo line of a $100 check, and Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, called for Moore to be expelled from the Senate if he were elected. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told The Tennessean on Wednesday that he was “really, really happy with what happened for all of us in our nation."

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The loss narrows Republicans’ already razor-thin majority in the Senate to 51-49, potentially imperiling Trump’s conservative agenda and empowering moderate lawmakers like Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). But Trump was undeterred when asked about the prospects for his legislative to-do list.

“I don't think it's going to affect it. I think that we're doing a lot. This is the biggest thing that we’ve worked on,” Trump said at a White House meeting with lawmakers about the tax reform package currently making its way through Congress. “This is one of the biggest pieces of legislation ever signed by this country, and I can tell you that everybody around this table, we are very, very excited about it.”

