The President of the United States effectively endorsed an accused child predator to be a United States senator Tuesday. We gave President Trump grief after he took a shot at "Al Frankenstien" (sic), a pet nickname for a Democratic senator who was accused of sexual harassment, but refused to address the saga of Roy Moore, the lawless theocrat running for Senate in Alabama who's been accused by more than eight women of sexual misconduct. A number of them say they were under 18 at the time of Moore's transgressions. One says she was 14 when Moore, then a 32-year-old assistant district attorney, brought her to his house and tried to get her to touch his genitals. Apparently, Moore's behavior was so creepy he was banned from the local mall, and a former police officer says she was told to keep him away from cheerleaders at high school football games.

But credit where it's due: the president finally weighed in on Moore yesterday. It's just that he defended him. This was too much for Stephen Colbert:

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We "have to listen to him also"? OK, sure. Moore denies the claims. But do we also have to listen to the four accusers and 30 corroborating sources in the initial Washington Post exposé alone? Do we have to listen to the women who've come forward subsequently, and to the people all over the community who say it was well known Moore "liked young girls"? The guy was banned from the damn mall, in part because he allegedly creeped on the Santa's helpers. As Colbert noted, Moore is on tape describing how he first met his wife when she was 23—"eight years" after he spotted her at a "dance recital." That would've made her 15 when Moore was, as he readily admits, ogling her from the crowd at a teen dance recital. This is a clear pattern.

The rest of Trump's statement—which, again, is a defense of an accused child predator who is running for the United States Senate—only got worse.

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MOMENTS AGO: "You don't need someone who's soft on crime like [Doug] Jones," Pres. Trump says, commenting on Roy Moore sexual assault allegations https://t.co/BUaz675TQw pic.twitter.com/Ah1LWAh6D4 — CBS News (@CBSNews) November 21, 2017

Doug Jones is "soft on crime"? This is the career prosecutor who convicted the Ku Klux Klan members who killed four little girls attending Sunday school at a Birmingham church during the Civil Rights Movement—a heinous act of domestic terrorism. But he's soft on crime, while the man accused of molesting a 14-year-old is a warrior for law and order? It's almost like, as Chris Hayes pointed out on Twitter, "crime" for the president doesn't merely mean breaking the law. Perhaps whether something is really a crime depends at least in part on what the person looks like.

But here's a real sentence for 2017: It is not a surprise to see the President of the United States back an accused child predator for Senate over an opponent with a sterling record that includes sending terrorists to prison. Trump, of course, has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women. That includes five contestants in the Miss Teen USA pageant, who said he walked in on them while they were naked in the dressing room and said, "Don't worry, ladies, I've seen it all before." He almost has to back a guy who denies a grotesque menu of allegations. He is also that guy.

Even more than that, many in the Republican Party are apparently open to being represented in the nation's highest legislative body by an accused pedophile. Alabama's Republican governor Kay Ivey essentially said this weekend that she both believes Roy Moore's accusers and will vote for him, so that he can help install conservative judges. And then there's this poll:

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Would you still consider voting for a candidate accused of sexual harassment by multiple women? (via new @QuinnipiacPoll)



Democrats

Yes 12%

No 81%



Republicans

Yes 43%

No 41% — Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) November 21, 2017

It's almost like electing a president who bragged about sexual misconduct on tape has done monstrous damage to the moral fabric of the nation. Perhaps it will be worth it to get some more conservative judges on the bench.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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