White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday sought to put distance between President Donald Trump and controversial statements made by newly minted GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore, two days after the president urged Moore to "win" his crucial general election in December.

Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court judge, is known for making inflammatory comments on race, religion, sexuality and gun violence. Asked on Thursday why such statements shouldn't disqualify Moore from a presidential endorsement, Sanders at first declined to comment.

"As we've said many times before, I'm not getting into back and forth on political endorsements from the podium," Sanders told reporters at the White House press briefing. "So I'm not going to weigh in on a specific race ahead of time at this point."

But when pressed – including in regard to Moore's assertions that " homosexual conduct should be illegal " and that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School occurred " because we've forgotten the law of God " – Sanders said Trump did not share the nominee's beliefs.

"I have not taken a deep dive on every comment that the Senate nominee has made," she said, "but I certainly know where the president stands on those issues and wouldn't see any parallel between the two of them on that front."

Asked if there were any comment Moore or another GOP candidate could make that would cause Trump to disavow them, Sanders again declined to discuss specifics.

"I'm not going to get into every potential hypothetical that any potential candidate may or may not have over the course of the time that the president is the president," Sanders said.

Also among Moore's controversial statements are his comparison of homosexuality to bestiality; his writing in a legal opinion that "homosexual behavior is ... a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it"; his description of divisions in the country in part as "blacks and whites fighting, reds and yellows fighting"; his questioning of former President Barack Obama's citizenship; his calling Islam a "false religion"; and his writing that Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., should not be allowed to serve in Congress because of his Islamic faith.

Ahead of Tuesday's GOP Senate runoff in Alabama, Trump supported incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, who was appointed earlier this year to fill the seat vacated when Jeff Sessions was sworn in as attorney general.

But the president has since moved toward Moore, who won the runoff by 9 points and will face Democrat Doug Jones in the red state’s general election.



Congratulations to Roy Moore on his Republican Primary win in Alabama. Luther Strange started way back & ran a good race. Roy, WIN in Dec! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2017