The Daily - Friday, Dec. 8, 2017

Senator Al Franken, a Democrat, reluctantly announced on Thursday that he would resign, even as he denied accusations of sexual misconduct. What does it tell us that his own party pushed for him to step down? Guest: Yamiche Alcindor, a national reporter for The New York Times who has been covering accusations of sexual harassment in Congress. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Duration: 21m
Broadcast on: 08 Dec 2017
Audio Format: other

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It's Friday, December 8th. Mr. President. Senator from Minnesota. Thank you, Mr. President. Thursday was one of the most dramatic days in Washington in a long time. It felt like James Comey's testimony. Everyone knew that something big was going to happen. Yamiche Alcindor has been reporting on sexual harassment in Congress. You didn't know what time it was going to happen, but you knew that Senator Al Franken, who had been facing weeks of pressure to resign, was going to be making this announcement. And he gets to the Senate floor and everyone's kind of hushed in trying to figure out what he's going to say. A couple months ago, I felt that we had entered an important moment in the history of this country. And he starts by talking as if he is just giving a regular one-minute floor speech. We were finally beginning to listen to women about the ways in which men's actions affect them. The moment was long overdue. He's talking about the moment and the fact that women have been speaking out and that the nation's been talking about sexual harassment. I was excited for that conversation and hopeful that it would result in real change that made life better for women all across the country and in every part of our society. Then the conversation turned to me. Over the last few weeks, a number of women have come forward to talk about how they felt my actions had affected them. I was shocked. I was upset.

But in responding to their claims, I also wanted to be respectful of that broader conversation because all women deserve to be heard and their experiences taken seriously. I think that was the right thing to do. I also think it gave some people the false impression that I was admitting to doing things that, in fact, I haven't done. This doesn't sound like a lawmaker who believes that he should be resigning. There's no question that Al Franken didn't think that he should resign. Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others, I remember very differently. He, throughout the entire speech, was saying that he was not guilty of the things that people thought of him. He said, "I have been a champion for women." I know there's been a very different picture of me painted over the last few weeks, but I know who I really am. And then finally get around to saying, "Nevertheless, today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate." And that was the moment that everyone was waiting for. Serving in the United States Senate has been the great honor of my life. I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator, nothing, has brought this honor on this institution. And I am confident that the ethics committee would agree. And I thought that that was really a big moment because he's saying, "If I was given a chance to have due process, the ethics committee would have cleared me." So essentially he's saying, "I'm being pushed out by my own party." So I think he was also in some ways really mad at the Democratic Party, and that came through pretty strongly. I said at the outset that the ethics committee was the right venue for these allegations to be heard and investigated and evaluated on their merits.

So you mean, given everything you've just said, why is Franken resigning? How did we get here? In mid-November, a radio host came out and essentially said that Al Franken had forcibly groped her. It happened so fast and he just mashed his lips against my face, and he stuck his tongue in my mouth so fast. A new woman is coming forward this morning to say that Senator Al Franken groped her years ago. That snowballed into something like six women accusing Al Franken

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