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Ryan joins GOP chorus saying Roy Moore needs to go, but Trump hasn't weighed in

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is the latest senior Republican Party leader to tell Roy Moore, the GOP nominee for Senate in Alabama, to drop out of the race.

“If he cares about the values and the people he claims to care about, then he should step aside,” Ryan said at a press conference Tuesday where he was mainly talking up the GOP tax plan.

As of Monday, five women have accused Moore of pursuing unwanted relationships with them when they were teens and he was an assistant DA in his 30s. Two of them said Moore sexually assaulted them, with the latest alleged victim saying he offered her a ride and then locked her in the car, groped her breasts, grabbed her by the neck and tried to force her head to his crotch, and warned her no one would believe her if she told of the incident.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the other most senior Republican in Congress alongside Ryan, disavowed Moore on Monday and said the GOP was now considering write-in candidates for the Dec. 12 special election to fill the Alabama Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions.

READ: Sessions has “no reason to doubt” Moore accusers

A number of other high-profile Republicans have distanced themselves from Moore in recent days, but the highest-profile GOP’er of all, President Trump, who’s heading back into the country after a two-week Asia tour, has been silent on the scandal so far. (At least 16 women have accused Trump himself of sexual harassment, allegations which the president has dismissed as unanimously false and “fake news.”)

Moore, meanwhile, hasn’t backed out of the race. Instead, he’s called the allegations fake news and threatened to sue the Washington Post, which first broke the story. By Alabama election law his name will remain on the ballot, and he’s still polling well, with some supporters saying they consider the allegations a political witch hunt.