WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump broke his silence on embattled Alabama Senate nominee Roy Moore on Tuesday, emphasizing doubts about sexual assault allegations and noting that Moore himself has denied sexual contact with a 14-year-old.

Trump's stance is a marked contrast from the chorus of Republicans eager to block an accused child molester from joining the nation's most exclusive club. It also puts him at odds with his own daughter, Ivanka Trump, whose recent comment that "there's a special place in hell for people who prey on children" is featured in a new ad for Moore's opponent.

"If you look at what is really going on ... he totally denies it. He says it didn't happen," Trump said before boarding Marine One at the White House and heading for a Thanksgiving at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. "You have to listen to him, also. ... He said 40 years ago this did not happen."

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A half-dozen women have come forward in the last two weeks with accusations that Moore made inappropriate or even illegal sexual overtures when he was in his 30s and they were in their teens.

One woman was 14 when, she said, Moore tried to undress her and get her to touch his genitals. The age of consent in Alabama was 16 at the time, and still is, and such contact with a 14-year-old by an adult was a crime.

Moore was a prosecutor at the time, and later served as the state's chief justice. He was removed twice from that post over defiance of federal court orders — to remove a Ten Commandments statue from the courthouse, and to mandate issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Trump didn't directly address the credibility of Moore's accusers. He was more explicit in arguing — as his adviser Kellyanne Conway had earlier this week — that Moore's Democratic opponent in the Dec. 12 special election, former prosecutor Doug Jones, is unacceptable.

"I can tell you one thing for sure. We don't need a liberal person in there, a Democrat, Jones. I've looked at his record. It's terrible on crime, it's terrible on the border, it's terrible on the military," Trump said.

During last year's campaign, the president faced numerous allegations of sexually aggressive behavior, including that he forced kisses on beauty pageant contestants and barged into the dressing room of underage contestants. The Access Hollywood tape that surfaced a month before Election Day, on which he boasted of using his celebrity status to get away with kissing women uninvited or even "grabbing" them by the genitals, generated widespread disgust.

On Friday, with Trump ignoring questions for days about whether he believed Moore or his accusers, or felt that Moore should quit the Senate race, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders insisted that there was nothing hypocritical about Trump attacking Sen. Al Franken after he apologized for offensive behavior toward women.

"Senator Franken has admitted wrongdoing, and the president hasn't. That's a very big distinction," Sanders said.

Franken has apologized for a photo taken during a USO tour to entertain troops in Afghanistan, in which he simulated grabbing the breasts of a fellow performer as she slept. That was before his election to the Senate. A Frisco woman has accused him of grabbing her buttocks during a brief photo at the Minnesota state fair.

"I don't want to speak for Al Franken," Trump said, asked if the senator should resign.

He was more direct is saying he believes that Congress should identify lawmakers who have been accused of sexual harassment.

"I do, I really do," he said.

On Tuesday afternoon, the House ethics committee opened an investigation of Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., on allegations of sexual harassment, as the list grows of political, Hollywood and media luminaries facing complaints. Some of those complaints are recent. Others, as with Moore, go back decades but are surfacing in the maelstrom of a high-stakes campaign.

One Alabama woman says that when she was 16, Moore lured her into a car, locked the door to block her escape, and tried to undress her and force her head toward his crotch. Other women have recounted flirtation and efforts to date them when they were over 16 and he was in his 30s.

Moore has remained defiant, denying allegations of assault and of sexual contact with a minor, and refusing to quit the Senate race. He has conceded that he dated teenagers, or tried to, while he was in his 30s.

Many Alabama conservatives have rallied around Moore, who has asserted that he's the target of a witch hunt by The Washington Post, which first uncovered the allegations that he'd molested young teens, and the GOP establishment, which has abandoned him.

The two most powerful Republicans in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, have deemed Moore's accusers credible and called him unfit to serve in Congress.

The head of the party's Senate campaign arm suggested that the Senate should expel Moore if he's elected in a Dec. 12 special election to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and held temporarily by an appointed senator, Luther Strange.

Moore beat Strange in a late-September GOP primary runoff. Trump backed Strange while the former White House strategist Steve Bannon backed Moore. Bannon's patience with Moore has reportedly worn thin in recent days as the allegations mounted.

Democratic nominee Jones, a former federal prosecutor, has surged in polls released since the allegations were published last week. One survey released on Sunday shows Jones in the lead for the first time.

Republicans now face the heartburn-inducing possibility of losing a safe Senate seat. That's something they can't afford at a time when they control the 100-members chamber by a bare 52-seat majority.

It's already too late under Alabama law to replace Moore on the ballot. McConnell and others have scrambled to explore a write-in option.