Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency in 2017.

I'm Freddie Gray and I'm Deputy Editor of The Spectator.

I'm joined today by Jim Antel, who is politics editor at the Washington Examiner, and we're going to be asking

why on earth Donald Trump has almost endorsed the extremely controversial Republican candidate

in Alabama, Roy Moore. So Jim, well, first of all, happy Thanksgiving, but before you

enjoy yourself, let's talk about Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senator who's being accused of fairly dire sexual abuse and of course all unproven still. But there's a lot of dirt around him. And yet yesterday Donald Trump surprised everyone by not exactly endorsing him, but certainly offering

words of support. Why do you think Trump did that? Actually, first of all, if you just give

us sort of Roy Moore's story a bit, and then maybe explain why Trump has decided to support this,

obviously now very controversial candidate. Well, Roy Moore has been a notorious figure in Alabama politics

for quite some time. He rose to prominence as a judge who defended some fairly socially

conservative positions. He kept a Ten Commandments display in his courtroom and would not take it down

even when higher courts

ordered him to do so he refused to comply with Supreme court ruling mandating same-sex marriage

and so he has been a controversial figure and he was the surprised Republican nominee in the Alabama Senate race

because anti-establishment candidates have had a tendency to do pretty well in recent Republican

primaries. But after winning the nomination, it was reported that he'd pursued a number of romantic

relationships when he was an unmarried man in his 30s with women as young as girls as young

as 14.

And a couple of the young women have alleged that he was even engaged in non-consensual

behavior. He assaulted them in his car and in other places.

Now, he has denied all of these accusations, and clearly there's nothing rising to the level

of video proof, but there does seem to be a lot of corroborating witnesses and a lot of people who don't know

...