Washington: US President Donald Trump sought today to distance himself from an embarrassing defeat in Alabama, saying he had been right all along that Republican senate candidate Roy Moore could not win.


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The former judge faced damaging accusations he had preyed on teenage girls as a younger man, but Trump endorsed him anyway in the final stretch of the campaign for a vacant US Senate seat.


Moore, now 70, lost the election yesterday to Democratic candidate Doug Jones, a stunning upset in a deeply conservative southern state that has not elected a Democrat to the US Senate in a quarter century.


The defeat was a blow to Trump as well as to Moore - but in an early morning tweet today, the president recalled that he had originally endorsed Moore's rival in the Republican primary, Luther Strange.


"The reason I endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily) is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right!


"Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!"


In an earlier tweet late Tuesday, Trump congratulated Jones on "a hard fought victory."


"The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win," he said.


Moore has yet to concede the loss, however, calling for a recount.


With 100 per cent of Alabama precincts reporting, Jones won 49.9 per cent of the vote compared to Moore's 48.4 per cent, a margin of nearly 21,000 votes out of 1.3 million cast, according to results posted by US media.