Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore speaks at the Defense of the Texas Marriage Amendment Rally outside of the Texas State Capitol. | Tamir Kalifa/AP The 7 most inflammatory things Roy Moore has said Republicans eager to maintain their thin Senate majority may now be forced to defend Moore's controversial statements.

Republicans clinging to their thin majority in the Senate are now confronting the question about whether to vigorously support insurgent Roy Moore, the highly controversial former judge who handily beat incumbent GOP Sen. Luther Strange in Alabama’s special election on Tuesday night.

Moore, who surged to victory despite President Donald Trump's endorsement of Strange, largely ran on an anti-establishment platform that heavily targeted figures such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.


Now, with the GOP already struggling to advance big-ticket legislation such as an Obamacare repeal and a tax overhaul, Republicans loath to lose another Senate seat will have to reckon with Moore's extensive history of inflammatory comments.

Here are seven of the most incendiary Moore comments that Republicans may be forced to defend to maintain their four-seat majority:

1. ‘Reds and yellows’

Moore last week ostensibly made a plea for unity at a rally in Florence, describing how the Civil War had torn Americans part, pitting brother against brother, the North against the South and Republicans against Democrats.

“Now we have blacks and whites fighting, reds and yellows fighting, Democrats and Republicans fighting, men and women fighting,” he said, apparently referring to Native Americans and Asian Americans by the ethnic slurs “reds and yellows.”

“What’s going to unite us? What’s going to bring us back together?” he continued. “A president? A Congress? No. It’s going to be God.”

Moore’s campaign defended his rhetoric by pointing to the religious song “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” which says Jesus loves “all the children of the world” — “red, brown, yellow, black and white.”

2. 'Maybe Putin is right' with his opposition to gay marriage

Moore told The Guardian in August that President Ronald Reagan’s declaration that the Soviet Union is “the focus of evil in the modern world” could be applicable to the U.S. today, citing same-sex marriage as an example

“You could say that about America, couldn’t you?” he said. “We promote a lot of bad things.”

His mention of same-sex marriage prompted The Guardian to note some similarities between Moore and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Well, maybe Putin is right,” Moore said. “Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know.”

In the same interview, Moore said it was God who put Trump in the White House.

“Everybody else thinks it’s the Russians,” he said. “I think it was the providential hand of God.”

3. ‘I was informed' that there are U.S. communities under Sharia law

Moore claimed in a summer interview that “there are some communities under Sharia law right now in our country.” Sharia law governs elements of Islamic life, and some conservatives believe it poses a threat to America’s legal system.

“Up in Illinois. Christian communities,” Moore told Vox. “I don’t know if they may be Muslim communities. But Sharia law is a little different from American law. It is founded on religious concepts.”

Asked which communities are under Sharia law and when that became the case, Moore said: “Well, there’s Sharia law, as I understand it, in Illinois, Indiana — up there. I don’t know.”

Vox’s Jeff Stein told Moore “that seems like an amazing claim for a Senate candidate to make,” to which he replied: “Well, let me just put it this way — if they are, they are; if they’re not, they’re not. That doesn’t matter.”

“I was informed that there were. But if they’re not, it doesn’t matter,” he continued. “Sharia law incorporates Muslim law into the law. That’s not what we do. We do not punish people according to the Christian precepts of our faith — so there’s a difference. I’ll just say this: I don’t know if there are. I understand that there are some.”

PolitiFact rates Moore’s claim a pants-on-fire lie.

4. What is a Dreamer? ‘Quit beating around and tell me what it is’

Moore claimed in a July radio interview that he was unfamiliar with Dreamers, the roughly 700,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and were given some protections by former President Barack Obama.

“Pardon? The Dreamers program?” Moore said when asked about it. Asked if he was aware of it, Moore said, “No.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it is, Dale, and quit beating around and tell me what it is,” he added.

Trump announced this year that he would rescind an Obama-era policy that provided the protections to Dreamers. Congress has until March, when the rescission kicks in, to address the issue through legislation.

5. 9/11 may have happened ‘because we’ve distanced ourselves from God’

Moore suggested that a lack of faith in God may have played a role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as he quoted a passage from the book of Isaiah in a February speech at the Open Door Baptist Church. The passage suggests that because God’s message was rejected, sin will come like a high wall that suddenly collapses.

“Sounds a little bit like the Pentagon, whose breaking came suddenly at an instance, doesn’t it?” he said. He steered attendees to a later verse that alludes to slaughters and towers falling “if you think that’s coincidence.”

“You know, we’ve suffered a lot in this country,” he said. “Maybe, just maybe, because we’ve distanced ourselves from the one that has it within his hands to heal this land.”

He indicated that God may be upset because “we legitimize sodomy” and “legitimize abortion.”

6. 'My personal belief' is that Obama wasn’t born in America

Moore questioned then-President Barack Obama’s citizenship during the presidential transition in December, telling the Constitution Party that “there is a big question about that.”

“My personal belief is that he wasn’t,” Moore said. “But that’s probably over and done in a few days, unless we get something else to come along.”

Last September, Trump accused Democrat Hillary Clinton of starting the so-called “birther” movement but claimed he would “finish it,” remarking after years of questioning Obama’s legitimacy that America’s first black president “was born in the United States, period.”

7. Rep. Keith Ellison should be prohibited 'from taking the congressional oath'

Years before candidate Trump would propose a Muslim ban and seek to restrict travel from certain Muslim-majority nations with an executive order, Moore penned a December 2006 editorial suggesting Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, shouldn’t be allowed to serve.

“Islamic law is simply incompatible with our law,” he wrote. “In 1943, we would never have allowed a member of Congress to take their oath on ‘Mein Kampf,’ or someone in the 1950s to swear allegiance to the ‘Communist Manifesto.’ Congress has the authority and should act to prohibit Ellison from taking the congressional oath today!”

