Roy Moore: ‘I’ll Quit Standing When They Lay Me in That Box and Put Me in the Ground’

Surrounded by supporters in Birmingham, embattled Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore again vowed to stay in the race to fill the vacancy created when Jeff Sessions became attorney general in the Trump administration.

Moore faces a growing number of accusations by women who allege inappropriate behavior on his part, including one woman who told The Washington Post he undressed her when she was 14 and he was 32, and one who said at a news conference that he tried to force her to have sex when she was 16.

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The Republican nominee tried to shift the conversation back to mundane questions over taxes, the military, health care, and judicial appointees.

“What I want to do in this campaign is very simple, is get back to the issues, which some are avoiding addressing,” he said. “I haven’t had one question from the press or the media about issues since these allegations have occurred.”

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Moore did not take questions from the media and did not specifically address allegations made in the local media by two women who said Moore groped them when he was a lawyer in private practice before entering politics.

Meanwhile, reporters peppered White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders with questions about Moore.

“The president, as I’ve said about seven or eight times now, thinks this is a decision for the people of Alabama to make,” she said.

“I want to tell who needs to step down,” Moore said to cheers. “That’s Mitch McConnell.”

CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta asked Sanders if she thinks Moore is a creep.

“Look, I don’t know Roy Moore,” she responded. “I haven’t met him in person. So I wouldn’t know how to respond to that.”

The accusations against Moore have put Republicans in a jam. It is too late to remove his name from the ballot. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has called on Moore to drop out and has mulled recruiting another Republican to mount a write-in candidacy.

Moore fired back on Thursday.

“Well, I want to tell who needs to step down,” he said to cheers. “That’s Mitch McConnell.”

Moore dismissed the Post story as “scurrilous, false charges, not charges, allegations, which I have emphatically denied time and time again. They’re not only untrue, but they have no evidence to support them.”

Moore attempted humor.

“One thing I would like to see happen in our country is unity,” he said. “I have united the Democrats and the Republicans in fighting against me, because they don’t want me.”

National Republicans hoping Moore might slink away for the good of the party likely are not familiar with his history. He has a long background of fighting lonely fights. Twice, a judicial ethics panel took action against him during separate stints as Alabama Supreme Court chief justice.

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The first time, the Court of the Judiciary removed him from office after he defied a federal judge’s order to take down a Ten Commandments monument he had installed in the Alabama Judicial Building. The second time occurred after Moore had launched a comeback: The same panel suspended him for encouraging probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

Moore struck a characteristically defiant tone Thursday.

“I’ll quit standing when they lay me in that box and put me in the ground,” he said.