It has been so gradual, you probably did not even notice it.
Disgraced former Sen. Al Franken is quietly worming his way back into public life, aided in large part by support from supposedly progressive news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC.
“Over the past several months,” the Daily Beast reports, “the former Minnesota senator — whose legislative career ended in 2018 over multiple allegations of sexual misconduct — has been quietly growing his media presence, becoming a more common sight on cable news, in op-ed pages, and on the radio.”
Franken himself boasts that he is “getting almost no pushback.”
“I feel very welcome in the public debate,” he told the news outlet.
In November alone, the former Democratic senator appeared three times in a single week on MSNBC, according to the report.
“At other times,” it adds, “he’s joined host Joy Reid to react to news or, since Election Day, has appeared regularly on Brian Williams’ show to discuss Donald Trump’s current futile attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral wins in several states via recounts, noting his own experience with a much narrower recount in 2008.”
The article continues:
Pretty impressive for a guy who was drummed out of the Senate at the height of the #MeToo movement after nearly a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct.
The first woman to go on the record against Franken was Leeann Tweeden, a conservative talk-radio host who claims he forced an unwanted kiss on her during a 2006 USO tour. On that same tour, which took place before Franken was a senator, he posed for a photo wherein he pantomimed groping Tweeden’s breasts. She was asleep at the time the photo was taken. After Tweeden went public with her allegation, seven additional women came forward to accuse the senator of unwanted touching and kissing. Some of the alleged sexual misconduct occurred after Franken had already won a seat in the Senate. Many of the stories have been contemporaneously corroborated.
After a brief period of denial, Franken’s Democratic colleagues, including Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, decided that eight accusers were eight too many, and they pressured him to resign from the upper chamber. He agreed, though he remained embittered and unrepentant to the very end.
Nearly two years later, Franken is now a go-to source for MSNBC and CNN, both of which went hard into the paint supporting the #MeToo movement back when it was a more popular and trendier thing to do.
Meanwhile, Gillibrand, who claims credit for ousting Franken from the Senate, has become little more than an afterthought in Democratic politics. Indeed, she went from being the inheritor of the Clinton legacy, the acolyte who was supposed to take the reins of the once-vaunted Clinton machine, to getting less speaking time at the 2020 Democratic National Convention than an online celebrity most famous for lip-syncing President Trump.
This is going to end with Gillibrand either leaving the Senate or becoming a totally insignificant background character all while Franken, who admits he had “crossed a line for some women,” goes on to become an even bigger, more influential player in Democratic politics than before his disgraceful exit — isn’t it?
Believe all women indeed.
