Leeann Tweeden said Sen. Al Franken’s “humiliation” of her went on throughout their two-week tour to visit U.S. troops overseas and were not limited to the kissing and photo incident she first mentioned Thursday.
“There were little jabs, there were little comments. I separated myself as much as I could from that tour, from him. I was never alone with him again. But you know, we’d be doing autograph sessions and I’d have to sit next to him because we were the co-emcees and I would literally sit with my back sort of towards him and I’d see a picture of mine being pulled away out of the corner of my eye and he would draw devil horns on me and the devil tail and push it back into my pile,” Tweeden told ABC’s “Good Morning America” Friday morning, one day after she went public about the sitting Minnesota Democratic senator.
“Most people are just hearing about the forced kiss and the picture at the end, but it was the humiliation through the two weeks of the tour that people don’t hear about. So at the end when I got the picture, it was like the final parting shot of the ‘heh heh, she’s going to see this when she gets home,’ that I couldn’t see him face-to-face to confront him,” she added. “That was sort of his parting shot as in your face, I got you one last time. I was belittled and humiliated.”
Tweeden, a Los Angeles radio broadcaster, said Franken had a chance to apologize to her in person following the incidents, but did not take the opportunity.
She recalled attending an event with her husband when she ran into him following the 2006 incident.
“He had a chance to apologize and never did,” Tweeden said.
She said the first apology from his office Thursday morning after she went public sounded like a staffer wrote it.
“That was very quick yesterday morning when I first talked about it. And I was like, ‘Yeah, OK, a two-sentence apology.’ I accepted that as well because you know politicians sort of have to get ahead of the game,” Tweeden said. “The second one was definitely heartfelt and I do accept it. I think he realized how people felt about it — now’s a different time. 2006 is not 2017.”
Tweeden has hinted at the possibility of a second victim, but no other women has come forward yet with accusations of sexual harassment or assault.
“He had a chance to apologize and never did.” – Leeann Tweeden says she accepts Sen. Franken's apology, despite not doing so until yesterday pic.twitter.com/vLwUBzqFQt— Good Morning America (@GMA) November 17, 2017
