WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump kept uncharacteristically silent and out of the fight Wednesday as national Republicans called ever more insistently for Roy Moore to abandon his Alabama campaign for the U.S. Senate and party officials sourly debated options that none of them liked. Far from surrendering, Moore’s camp fought back against allegations of sexual impropriety with teenage girls years ago when he was in his 30s.

Trump, who withstood allegations of sexual assault weeks before his own election, ducked questions about the Alabama race and whether he would join GOP congressional leaders in urging Moore to step aside. With Moore’s would-be colleagues threatening to expel him should he win and the Republican National Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee pulling their support, Trump was seen as the best hope for pushing a fellow political rebel from the race.

Moore’s campaign chairman and personal attorney addressed the media in Alabama, trying to undercut the story of the latest woman to accuse Moore of sexually accosting her when she was in high school.

It’s too late to remove Moore’s name from the ballot, so fielding a Republican write-in candidate at this point would almost certainly hand the election to the Democrats unless he should withdraw and persuaded his supporters to vote for that substitute.