Moore aide speechless after being told lawmakers don’t have to swear on Bibles

A spokesman for GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore went silent on Tuesday when told on live television that U.S. law does not require elected officials to be sworn into office on a Christian Bible. 

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Ted Crockett sought to defend Moore’s past comments that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in Congress, saying that they could not do so because they are cannot “ethically” be sworn in on the Christian Bible.

“You have to swear on a Bible to be an elected official in the United States of America,” Crockett said. “He alleges that a Muslim cannot do that ethically, swearing on the Bible.”

{mosads}

“You don’t actually have to swear on a Christian Bible,” Tapper replied. “You can swear on anything really. I don’t know if you knew that. You can swear on a Jewish Bible.

“Oh, no. I swore on the Bible,” Crockett said. “I’ve done it three times, Jake.”

“I’m sure you have. I’m sure you’ve picked a Bible,” Tapper responded. “But the law is not that you have to swear on a Christian Bible. That is not the law.”

Crockett then stared silently into the camera with a shocked look on his face. 

“You don’t know that?” Tapper asked after several seconds of silence. He then began to end the segment before Crockett replied.

“I know that Donald Trump did it when we made him president,” Crockett said.

“Because he’s Christian and he picked it. That’s what he wanted to swear in on,” Tapper said before ending the segment.

John Quincy Adams took the oath of office with his hand not on a Bible but on a book of constitutional law. pic.twitter.com/YKN5aFkAOx

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 12, 2017

Moore, a conservative former Alabama Supreme Court justice, has billed himself as a staunch evangelical Christian with a desire to more closely align religion and government. He has said that tragedies, such as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, are the result of God’s wrath for immorality and secularism in U.S. society. 

Moore is facing off against Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama’s special Senate election Tuesday. Polls are set to close at 8 p.m.