'Maybe Putin is right': Republican Senate frontrunner on Russian leader

Roy Moore, a former Alabama judge and top contender to fill Jeff Sessions’ vacant seat, said the Russian leader could be ‘more akin to me than I know’

Paul Lewis and Adithya Sambamurthy in Alabama
Thursday 10 August 2017 19.40 BST

Roy Moore, the controversial former judge and a leading contender in Alabama’s Senate race, has said “maybe Putin is right” and “more akin to me than I know” given the Russian leader’s stance on gay marriage.

Moore, who was propelled to fame in 2001 over his refusal to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments that he’d installed in state courthouse, is a leading contender to fill the vacancy left by Donald Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

Several polls have indicated Moore could have the edge in the Republican primary, which will be held next Tuesday, although the president’s endorsement this week of another candidate, Luther Strange, could change that dynamic.

In an interview with the Guardian’s Anywhere But Washington series, Moore also said that Ronald Reagan’s famous declaration about the Soviet Union being “the focus of evil in the modern world” might today be applied to the US.

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