Former NBA All-Star Charles Barkley on Monday urged Alabama voters to “stop looking like idiots” and reject Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore.
Speaking at a campaign rally for Democrat Doug Jones on the eve of the special election for Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s former Senate seat, Barkley said “there’s no way possible” that Moore, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, should be leading in polls.
“When people in your own party say they won’t vote for you or support you, that’s a dead giveaway. It’s amazing,” Barkley, an Alabama native who played basketball at Auburn, told the crowd in Birmingham. “I am begging and urging everybody to get out, call all your friends. We’ve got to, at some point, we’ve got stop looking like idiots to the nation.”
{mosads}
Moore, who was twice removed as chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court, has in recent weeks been accused of pursuing teenage girls while in his 30s. One woman says Moore initiated a sexual encounter with her when she was 14, another says Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16.
Several leading Republicans and GOP groups have called on him to drop out, but President Trump and the Republican National Committee have re-upped their support. Staunch Trump supporters, including former chief strategist Stephen Bannon and former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke held their own final-night rally for Moore on Monday.
“If somebody sent you this as a movie script, you would throw it in the trash,” Barkley said.