Tom Cotton Backs Up Roy Moore: ‘We Shouldn’t Have Trial by Newspaper’

MONTGOMERY, Alabama — Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) backed up GOP candidate Judge Roy Moore in an interview with the Associated Press as allegations against Moore crumble amid revelations of forgery.

In the interview published on Saturday, Cotton compared the frivolous allegations against Moore to the frivolous allegations that came out against President Donald Trump before his landslide victory over Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton. Cotton said the voters would decide the veracity of the claims just like they deemed Trump to not be guilty last year, and that the news media should not determine whether or not people are guilty.

Here is an excerpt from a much longer interview Cotton did with the Associated Press on multiple topics:

Cotton declined to say whether he thinks equal standards apply in all cases against Franken, Moore and Trump, who has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual misconduct and was recorded by “Access Hollywood” bragging about touching women without their consent. All three men have denied details of the accusations, if not the claims outright.

On Moore and others, Cotton said, voters “are going to make that decision, just like the people of this country made their decision last year on Donald Trump.”

He added that women should be able to complain of sexual assault and the accused should be able to defend themselves.

“We shouldn’t have trial by newspaper,” he said.

Cotton’s comments come as on Friday night in Pensacola, Florida, President Trump urged all Alabamians to vote for Roy Moore in the special Senate election Tuesday—and cast more doubt on the allegations against Moore amid the revelation that one accuser forged part of the inscription in her yearbook that she and her attorney, activist Gloria Allred, both originally attributed to Moore.

“So did you see what happened today? Do you know the yearbook? Did you see that? There was a little mistake made. She started writing things in the yearbook,” Trump said. “Oh, what are we going to do? Gloria Allred, any time you see her, you know something’s going wrong.”

Moore towers over radical leftist Democrat Doug Jones in the latest polling just days before the all-important election here. Former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, is coming back to Alabama on Monday night for a closing rally in Dothan after campaigning with Judge Moore this past week in Fairhope. In his AP interview, Cotton also signaled support for Bannon’s worldview on U.S.-China relations.

“Cotton appears to be much more in line with Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser who has called for the United States to be ‘maniacally focused’ on an economic war against China to narrow the trade deficit and pull manufacturing jobs back to the United States,” the Associated Press wrote.

Cotton’s comments also seriously undercut Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s efforts to undermine Moore’s campaign. After spending more than $30 million in a failed effort to defeat Moore in the primary and runoff, McConnell then orchestrated an effort to push Moore out of the race after these allegations surfaced in the Washington Post. Within minutes of the Post story, first posted weeks ago, McConnell rallied his fellow establishment GOP senators to push Moore to “step aside.” McConnell and the GOP establishment failed. Moore is still standing and is poised for victory on Tuesday.