Trump Backs Moore; Robocalls For Trump Event.
BASH: Alabama voters have just over a week left to decide how they'll vote in their state's controversial Senate election. Polls show a very tight race and the embattled Republican candidate, Roy Moore, just got a much needed shot in the arm from President Trump. He fully endorsed Moore, who has, of course, been accused of sexually assaulting a then 14-year-old girl, which Moore denies. On Twitter this morning Trump ignored the allegations and argued the raw politics of it all, saying Moore's Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, would be little more than a Pelosi-Schumer puppet. Another boost for Moore could come this Friday when the president holds a campaign-style rally just across the Alabama border in Pensacola, Florida. The change of heart is not just coming from the White House, though. Perhaps even more surprising, top Republicans, some of them who have come out against Moore, now seemed resigned to letting the voters decide and deal with the aftermath later if he's elected.</s>SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MAJORITY LEADER: Well, I think we're going to let the people of Alabama decide a week from Tuesday who they want to send to the Senate, and then we'll address the matter appropriately. I've already said in the past that I thought this was a matter that would have to be considered by the committee. Ultimately it will be up to them to make that decision. And they'll make it depending upon whether Judge Moore ends up coming to the Senate.</s>GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC'S "THIS WEEK": Do you believe that Jude Moore should be in the Senate?</s>MCCONNELL: I'm going to let the people of Alabama make the call. We're -- the election, it's been going on a long time. There's been a lot of discussion about it. They're going to make the decision.</s>BASH: CNN's Manu Raju and Sara Murray are still here. Joining us as well, John McCormack from "The Weekly Standard" and Jackie Kucinich of "The Daily Beast." Manu, wow, that is a 180 from Mitch McConnell. They'll likely argue that it's not entirely a 180 because he's always, of course, said it's up to the voters of Alabama. But he, for weeks, was going a whole lot further saying that he shouldn't be elect, that he should drop out, that maybe they should write in another candidate, on and on, everything that he could think of to try to get Moore out. Not anymore.</s>RAJU: Not anymore. You know, largely it's because it's an acknowledgement that Moore is going to be in this race.</s>BASH: Yes.</s>RAJU: Next week is the election. He's obviously not getting out of the race. And McConnell's public pressure campaign in a lot of ways initially was to get President Trump to side with him and call on Moore to drop out and hopefully they could concoct some scheme where some other Republican would somehow get in and swoop</s>BASH: Right, and you mentioned --</s>JACKIE KUCINICH, "THE DAILY BEAST": I can't imagine that they want to drag this out and have more news cycles dedicated to Roy Moore. I mean he's probably going to generate a lot of his own because it doesn't seem like he's going to have a very positive view towards McConnell should he become a senator. But the amount of political capital they could spend trying to expel him, they are probably going to be doing a cost benefit analysis at that point.</s>BASH: Yes.</s>RAJU: Right.</s>BASH: That's exactly right, a cost benefit analysis is the key, what -- whether or not, as people like Lindsey Graham have said, whether or not he's going to destroy the Republican brand.</s>KUCINICH: Right.</s>BASH: Just this morning the president did actually call Roy Moore on the phone. That is according to his campaign manager. She said Judge Moore just got off the phone with President Trump. We have his full support. Thank you, Mr. President. Let's MAGA -- make America great again, of course. John, you have the cover story of "The Weekly Standard" after going down to Alabama and doing a lot of really good reporting down there. What is the single biggest driving factor for these voters? Is it, as I've seen and heard from some, that they just don't -- they can't even fathom a Democrat being elected from Alabama, or is it that the president maybe now supports him or is it we can't let Washington tell us what to do?</s>JOHN MCCORMACK, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": Well, you're talking about the remaining voters. You know, the remaining likely voters. I think there are a lot of Republican leaning voters who simply are no longer likely voters. They're going to stay home. Alabama's such a Republican state, as Nate Silver pointed out today, Roy Moore's doing about 25 percentage points worse than a typical Republican. But that's not quote enough to make him lose the election. He's up about 5, 6 points right now. What you see on the ground in Alabama is, you just hear everyone say that they -- they simply don't believe the allegations. And that's borne out by the polls as well. I think that Donald Trump, his endorsement of Roy Moore, is casting doubt on these allegation, saying that they're 40 years old. That's helped something like 17 percent of Trump voters. So they believe some of the allegations. In mid-November, after Trump weighed in, that went down to 9 percent. And, again, that's at that margin when you're going to decide this election. Again, in three weeks since -- three or four weeks since these allegations are not the most heinous allegations by Leigh Corfman, who was then 14, alleges that at age 14 she was molested. There's been -- there have been no holes poked in that story. There are contemporaneous accounts. She's been willing to go on TV. So, again, despite all that very strong evidence, you have a lot of voters who are just kind of taking this bunker mentality saying, oh, we don't really believe the most heinous accusations. Maybe some of the other allegations that aren't quite at that level, that he dated 17 and 18-year-old girls, which is , again, you know, young -- a pale (ph) for many voters, but --</s>BASH: Yes. But they -- most voters who are going just don't believe it?</s>MCCORMACK: They either don't believe all of it or they say, well, maybe something -- you know, he dated someone who was a little too young and it didn't -- nothing really bad happened and we disbelieve the most serious allegations.</s>BASH: Sara, I want to play for you a robo call that Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, did for -- well, in -- it was a little bit -- I wouldn't say too cute by half, but very clever is probably a nicer way to say it, inviting Alabamans to Florida for the president's campaign rally on Friday -- campaign-style rally.</s>LARA TRUMP, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S DAUGHTER-IN-LAW: I'm incredibly excited to invite you to an event in your area. The special rally event featuring President Donald Trump will take place on Friday, December 8th, at the Pensacola Bay Center.</s>BASH: OK, so she's clearly not endorsing Roy Moore. She didn't mention Roy Moore. But the fact that she's trying to lure people over the Alabama border to Florida, very different from the kind of quote that we heard from the president's daughter not that long ago where she said, there's a special place in hell for people who prey on children. I've yet to see a valid explanation and I have no reason to doubt the victim's accounts. Now, to be clear, again, Lara Trump is not saying that she believes Roy Moore. She didn't even mention Roy Moore. But she's clearly trying to galvanize support and attendees for her father-in-law's rally from Alabama.</s>MURRAY: Well, absolutely. And, look, we know that one of the reasons the president has been hesitant to believe the allegations against Roy Moore is because of his own experience of women coming out and making allegations against then candidate Trump, or even before he was a candidate, about sexual harassment, about sexual assault. Now, the president has repeatedly denied those. But that's part of the reason that he's been so willing to stick up for Roy Moore. By the way, this is also part of the reason that women are so reluctant to come forward. When we talk about, why didn't she say something sooner, why is she just stepping up now? I mean, as you pointed out, one of the women who's making the most serious allegations, people are not poking holes in her story, people are not doubting her account with any kind of sort of facts that rebut that, and yet people don't believe her anyway. People are questioning her motives. They can't possibly believe that maybe this woman finally decided to step out and share her story, I don't know, because this is a man who's on the cusp of becomes a United States senator and she found that prospect to be alarming. Not everyone in the White House is comfortable with where the president is at on this, but they are aware that he is the president. He has made a decision. So it goes. And we'll see what he says in Pensacola.</s>RAJU: That's the -- that's the implicit message that the president is sending there --</s>BASH: Right.</s>RAJU: That it's OK to go after and attack these accusers in the political arena, even if these -- the allegations are so serious and they're --</s>MURRAY: Right, that politics matters more. That getting that vote matters more.</s>RAJU: Right.</s>BASH: Well, everyone stand by because the president has another target, the FBI. We're going to talk about that after a break.