In a normal Republican administration, an allegation that Senator Al Franken, a Democrat, had groped a woman as she slept, accompanied by a damning photo, would be a political gift to the White House. When its occupant is Donald Trump, however, the story is altogether different—late in his presidential campaign, Trump was faced with accusations of sexual misconduct and assault from more than 16 women, which many believed would spell his political doom.

Trump and his ilk have vigorously denied the allegations, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently declaring from the podium that all of the president’s accusers are liars. But they’ve resurfaced in the wake of the Roy Moore scandal, which has left both Trump and the Republican Party metaphorically handcuffed to a Senate candidate accused of child molestation. Neither measure of hypocrisy seems to weigh on Trump, however, who gleefully ripped Franken Thursday night on Twitter.

Trump, of course, is the kind of person who can brag on tape about grabbing women “by the pussy” and still win a presidential election, but that fact seems to have slipped his mind—or, perhaps, encouraged his Twitter fingers. But given the White House’s official stance on Moore, which so far has been one of non-engagement, Trump’s impulse could backfire; more than a week after the first allegations against Moore surfaced, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters during Thursday’s press briefing that “the President believes that these allegations are very troubling and should be taken seriously, and he believes that the people of Alabama should make a decision on who their next senator should be.”

Sanders’s official pronouncement came after days of reports that the president was torn between the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which had dropped its endorsements of Moore en masse, and the populist wing, which has doubled down on backing Moore under the direction of Steve Bannon. On Wednesday, sources “close to the White House” told CNN that Trump “believes the allegations against Moore are bad for the party's brand, but is reluctant to come out forcefully against Moore because of sexual misconduct allegations he himself has faced.”

Had Trump let Sanders’s statement stand, the upcoming special election would have remained a clash between populist and establishment values, with a repellent undercurrent of the president’s past predatory behavior. But bringing in Franken—a senator whose behavior drew condemnation from his own party but pales in comparison to Trump’s own alleged actions—suddenly invited a re-examination of the Access Hollywood tape, not to mention the rest of the president’s sordid history when it comes to women. Whether that will play into the decision of Alabama voters, however, is still up in the air: a recent J.M.C. Analytics poll found that 37 percent of Alabama evangelicals were more likely to vote for Moore because of the allegations. Meanwhile, when asked about the disparity between Trump’s Twitter response to Franken and his comments on Moore, the White House offered a characteristically mind-bending response: