John Nolte, a columnist at Breitbart News, told Breitbart radio listeners that even if allegations that Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore pursued young girls—one as young as 14 years old—in his 30s are true, that it was “not a violation of social norms.”

This morning on “Breitbart News Daily,” Nolte told host Alex Marlow that upon examining the stories of the women who have alleged that Moore pursued them when they were teenagers, he believed “Roy Moore gets the benefit of the doubt.” He went on to criticize media outlets and Democrats who have expressed shock and outrage over the allegations.

“It’s also that the media and the Democrats are piling on with allegations about Roy Moore wanting to date teenagers—it’s not illegal and at the time it wasn’t even a violation of social norms because unless you’re an urban elite provincial who doesn’t understand that there are different societies within America, 40 years ago it was not unheard of for a 30-year-old man to look for a much younger wife. And if he was trying to date a 16- or 17-year-old, I’m uncomfortable with that—I’ll admit that—but it’s not illegal. It’s not a violation of social norms,” Nolte said.

Nolte said he didn’t think it was fair that media and liberals were “sentencing him to historic infamy when benefit of the doubt should go to him.”

Marlow said he agreed and that it was important to give Moore the benefit of the doubt because of “what’s at stake here politically, should we lose another Senate vote.” Of six accusations made about Moore’s past behavior, Marlow claimed five to be debunked and said that the one accusation he could not write off was “just not enough after 40 years of being in public life for that to be a reason to end a guy’s career.”

In an article published in Breitbart last week, Nolte expressed a similar sentiment and wrote: