Roy Moore: The man too crazy for Trump beats the president's pick

Donald Trump has been dealt an embarrassing blow, with an upstart candidate defeating the senator he campaigned for just days ago.

Former judge Roy Moore comfortably defeated appointed senator Luther Strange in a special election primary in the deeply Republican state of Alabama.

Even more awkwardly for Trump, Moore has proven a consistent embarrassment for his party, and his nomination threatens what should be the safest Republican seat in the Senate.

"I think homosexuality should be illegal," Moore said in 2015.

"Sodomy was declared illegal by the United States Supreme Court in 1987, it said there was no right under the constitution to enlarge the fundamental rights of homosexuals.

"Well, surely they overturned it."

Moore would go on in the interview to liken homosexuality to bestiality.

Last week Moore recited a poem at a campaign rally against abortion.

"Babies piled in dumpsters, abortion on demand," he recited.

"Oh sweet land of liberty, your house is on the sand."

He would also go on to describe Native Americans as "reds" and Asians as "yellows".

Yesterday he waved a handgun in the air at a rally.

Moore has been removed from office as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court twice.

In 2003 he was unseated for refusing to remove a plaque of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse.

He was re-elected narrowly in 2013, then suspended again in 2016 for instructing lower court judges not to allow same-sex marriages in the state.

Trump followed the historical precedent of endorsing incumbent Luther Strange last week, and it is a rebuke of his influence that the upstart candidate won instead.

But Trump appeared to hedge his bets whilst campaigning for "Big Luther" at a rally in Huntsville last week.

"I shouldn't be doing it. The last thing I want to do is be involved in a primary," Trump told the cheering crowd.

"If Luther doesn't win, they're not going to say we picked up 25 points in a very short period of time.

"They're going to say, 'Donald Trump, the president of the United States, was unable to pull his candidate across the line. It is a terrible, terrible moment for Trump. This is total embarrassment'."

Trump has since deleted two tweets that urged voters to support Strange.

Trump's endorsement of Strange at a rally was overshadowed by his calls to fire NFL players who knelt during the national anthem.

Strange was appointed to the vacant seat in controversial circumstances earlier this year, after Senator Jeff Sessions resigned to become US attorney-general.

As Alabama's attorney-general, Strange was tasked with investigating Governor Robert Bentley for ethics violations.

Instead, Bentley appointed Strange to the Senate seat, effectively shutting down the probe.

Bentley would resign two months later in disgrace.

Alabama is one of the most rigidly conservative states in America, so Moore is the favourite to win the general election.

But Democratic operatives are quietly hopeful their candidate Doug Jones can overcome the state's ideological lean.

Jones is a former federal prosecutor known for locking up the Birmingham church bombers in 2001.

The case had gone unsolved for decades but Jones was able to indict and convict the two remaining Klansmen responsible for the terrorist attack which killed four girls.

But in the likely event that Moore becomes the next Alabama senator, he would not necessarily be an ally for Trump and the congressional Republican Party.

Moore declared earlier this week he would not support the Republican Party's signature legislature repealing Obamacare.

The bill was withdrawn from the Senate earlier today because of a lack of support.