It's no secret that Roy Moore, Senate candidate for Alabama, has been embroiled in scandals leading up to the December 12 special election. Most notably, Moore has been accused of initiating a sexual encounter with Leigh Corfman, who would've been 14 years old at the time of the incident. Moore would've been in his early 30s. A report by CNN relays many of the facts used below in this article.
Allegations of sexual misconduct and molestation
In addition to the claims about Moore's molestation of an underage girl, others have come forward with claims about Moore. Although only Corfman claims to have been under the age of consent when Moore molested her (age of consent is 16 in Alabama), one Beverly Young Nelson claims that Moore assaulted her when she was 18, after giving her a ride home from her waitressing job at a restaurant. She alleges that after squeezing her neck to try and pull her face to his crotch and groping her breasts, he gave up at some point, saying, "You are a child. I am the District Attorney of Etowah County.
If you tell anyone about this, no one will believe you.”
One of the prosecutors that used to work with Moore, Teresa Jones, told CNN that it was common knowledge that Moore dated high school girls, adding that "everyone we knew thought it was weird."
GOP response
Moore had also, for a short time, been abandoned by the GOP, presumably thinking it was unseemly to openly support an alleged child molester. However, in recent days, Senate Majority Mitch McConnell has scaled back his initial comments about the matter, insisting that he believes that the voters of Alabama should "make the call" about whether or not to send Moore to the Senate.
In November, President Trump first gave Moore a tacit Endorsement, implying that whether or not the allegations were true, Moore would be better in the Senate than a Democrat, and firmly took a stance December 4 saying the same thing.
Twitter clap back
When Moore took to Twitter to brag about receiving the president's endorsement, not everyone took kindly to the news. His Twitter mentions feature an assortment of negative comments, ranging from candid outrage to more subtle levels of shade, with most referring to Moore's alleged criminal misdoings.
"Maybe there's a pageant in town," said one Twitter user.
One account, named Treason's Greetings (a reference to evidence that the president colluded with Russia to win November's election) took the time to write Moore a poem from the president's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."
And others still simply called into question the Christian credentials of Moore, an alleged child molester, and the Christians that support him.
The vote between Moore and his opponent, Democrat Doug Jones, remains razor-thin, and well within the margin of statistical error, making it very difficult to determine the outcome of the election. Regardless, citizens will most likely continue making their opinions known in Moore's Twitter mentions.