Now that Alabama candidate Roy Moore has the support of President Trump and the Republican National Committee, it seems like his team feels emboldened to say whatever crosses their mind.
Case in point: Moore's spokeswoman Janet Porter's interview with CNN's Poppy Harlow on Tuesday morning. After Harlow thanked Porter for being on the show, the spokeswoman took an interesting turn.
“Thank you, it is great to be with you, and by the way, congratulations on your unborn child,” Porter said to Harlow, who is pregnant with her second child. “That’s the reason I came down as a volunteer to speak for Judge Roy Moore, because he stands for the rights of babies like yours in the womb, where his opponent will support killing them until the moment of birth.”
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(Porter's claim, however, is false. Jones is pro-choice, but he also supports Alabama's current laws, which ban most late-term abortion procedures.) Harlow brushed over the comment about her pregnancy and began the interview — and it only went downhill from there.
Throughout the 17-minutes long interview, Porter spent most of her time attacking the women who have accused Moore of misconduct. At least eight women have said Moore pursued relationships with them when they were teenagers and he was an assistant district attorney in his 30s. One woman alleges that Moore molested her when she was 14 and another says the candidate sexually assaulted her. Moore denies the allegations, even though some of the women have offered evidence.
Porter made her case on behalf of Moore by saying that the allegations had been discredited (though she didn't explain how) and by insisting that the candidate must be innocent since there's a group of women who haven't accused him of sexual misconduct.
“We need to make it clear there’s a group of nonaccusers, that have not accused the judge of anything illegal,” she said at one point, repeating the "non accusers" defense again later in the interview.
And when Porter brought up Harlow's pregnancy again, the anchor told her forcefully: "Let’s leave my child out of this."
Porter, like Moore, is staunchly anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ rights.
She is an anti-abortion extremist who championed Ohio's "heartbeat bill," which would ban abortions as early as six weeks after conception. (The bill was vetoed by Gov. John Kasich.) Porter, who is also known as "Janet Folgler," has also been an anti-LGBTQ+ rights campaigner for more than two decades and founded Faith2Action, an organization considered an "active anti-LGBT hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Alabama special election will take place on December 12 and polls show it will be a close race between Moore and Jones.