US sexual misconduct allegations diverting focus from Trump policies: Analyst

The growing allegations of sexual misconduct against Republican US Senate candidate Roy Moore highlight the double standards in Washington and is diverting attention from the Trump administration’s military interventions around the world, a former US Senate candidate says.

Two more women came forward on Wednesday with allegations of sexual harassment against Moore, one accusing him of groping her and the other of forcing a kiss on her when he was 30 and she was about 18.

They are the sixth and seventh women to accuse Moore of sexual improprieties since his race for the Alabama Senate seat began.

“I am troubled by the Democrats in the sense that they always will focus on someone like Roy Moore, which is all well and good, but then they give a free pass to someone like [former] President Bill Clinton, who was clearly a sexual predator, clearly involved in many, many years of sexual misconduct,” said Mark Dankof, who is also a broadcaster and pastor in San Antonio, Texas.

Moore, a former Alabama state judge, is the Republican nominee in the 2017 special election to fill the US Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and currently held by Luther Strange.

National Republican Party leaders have called on him to drop out of the Senate race. Moore has denied the allegations.

PressTV-4 more women accuse Republican of sex abuse

Republican politician Roy Moore is faced with new sexual assault accusations from nine women.

“There is another concern that I have in this case; the Judge Roy Moore situation has been driven to such national prominence in the news media, that it is diverting us from the very, very serious question of actions that the United States and the Trump administration are taking that will very conceivably involve the United States in a wider war in the Middle East,” Dankof told Press TV on Thursday.

“The whole question of the United States' continued involvement in all kinds of wars of counter-insurgency around the world, all kinds of wars of regime change, all kinds of over-extension of its empire, both militarily and economically, is largely being lost to the American people as the mainstream media focuses almost exclusively on this Judge Roy Moore story,” he added.

Before the allegations, Moore, a “Christian conservative” and former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, had been heavily favored to defeat Democrat Doug Jones, a former US attorney.

Moore has suggested that US Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and other establishment Republicans are working with news media to discredit him.

Women in the US and UK have recently been coming forward to share encounters of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, including in the media and entertainment industries and the realm of politics.

Since last month, over 50 women have made sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. The scandal has triggered a social media campaign, as well as a wave of similar allegations against powerful men around the world, called the "Weinstein effect."

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