The rehabilitation of serial sexual abuser Al Franken continues apace.
The White House is scrambling to respond to allegations that Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a woman in the early 1980s when they were both in high school. The judge’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, recalls neither the day, nor the month, nor the year that the alleged assault took place. She doesn’t recall where it happened. Ford recalls only that the alleged assailant was a young Brett Kavanaugh.
It’s all serious stuff, and it has left members of Congress in the precarious position of figuring out how best to reconcile the allegations with Kavanaugh’s scheduled confirmation vote. But for some in politics and news media, the chief takeaway from the assault allegations is that now is the perfect time to revise the history of Franken’s disgraceful exit from the U.S. Senate.
“The difference between liberals and conservatives couldn’t be clearer — we demanded Al Franken resign,” said Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas. “They defend sexual predators in White House and Supreme Court.”
MSNBC contributor Joyce Alene said elsewhere that it is a “fact” that Democratic women “called out Al Franken when stories of his misconduct, not sexual assault as here, came to light.”
“The contrast between Democrats, who helped drive Al Franken out of the Senate, and Republicans, who backed Trump, Moore, and now Kavanaugh, is so stark and ugly and dangerous for conservatives that they lie about it,” said Crooked Media Editor-In-Chief Brian Beutler.
This is revisionism. Though Democratic lawmakers did eventually call on Franken to step down, many did so only after an eighth accuser came forward to allege a pattern of sexual misconduct. Prior to this, the line from Democrats was that Franken deserved a hearing. Moulitsas can pretend Democrats selflessly led the charge to toss out Franken, but he’d be wrong. It took more than half a dozen accusations for Democratic lawmakers to agree with the public outcry. Franken himself practically had to be dragged from office.
At the same time that certain members of the news media attempt to re-write Franken’s story, others are whitewashing the multiple credible allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against the former senator from Minnesota.
CNBC’s John Harwood, for example, has downplayed Franken’s reported sexual misconduct, arguing the things the ex-lawmaker did as an adult male are nothing compared to the single, unverified allegation involving a 17-year-old high schooler.
“Without judging merits of allegation against Kavanaugh, nothing alleged about Franken was anywhere close in seriousness,” he tweeted.
Eight women have accused Franken of unwanted kissing and touching. Franken’s first accuser, Leeann Tweeden, said he forcibly kissed her in 2006 during a USO tour rehearsal. On that same tour, when Tweeden was asleep, Franken also posed for a photo showing him pretend to grope her breasts. A second woman, Lindsay Menz, said Franken grabbed her buttocks in 2010 (after he was elected senator) when they posed for a photo together at the Minnesota State Fair.
Franken has never denied the allegations. The closest the former senator has come to apologizing to his accusers was when he explained all eight have remembered their encounters with him “very differently.” This is probably his smartest move, considering there’s a photograph of him “groping” a sleeping woman.
For Harwood, the important thing to remember is that Franken’s accusers and Republicans are just as bad, if not worse.
“[T]hat pic was obviously a joke, not groping, just like LeeAnn Tweeden wrapping her leg around Robin Williams and smacking his butt,” he said in defense of Franken, “entertainment for soldiers deployed overseas is raunchy like that.”
“I’m not saying any of it was funny,” he said later, adding for good measure: “nor was it funny when Bush 41 did similar things in photo sessions. I’m saying that was their intent. They weren’t assaults.”
Harwood is not alone in this campaign to soften the allegations against Franken. He’s not alone in suggesting the former senator is the victim of a political witch hunt. Harwood is joined in this slow and steady attempt to clean up Franken’s image by the likes of EMILY’s List president Stephanie Schriock, David Axelrod, and CNN’s Alisyn Camerota.
With friends like this, it seems increasingly likely the former senator will try at some point to make a re-entry into U.S. politics, as my Washington Examiner colleague Emily Jashinsky predicted earlier this month. Indeed, for Franken’s allies in politics and media, the Kavanaugh allegations are the perfect cover for the former senator’s final rehabilitation.
