3923 Sen. Al Franken's Insane Resignation Speech | True News
Minnesota Senator Al Franken recently announced his plan to resign from Congress after a number of sexual harassment accusations. Franken called it “the worst day of my political life,” and quickly used the situation to attack President Donald Trump and deny personal responsibility for the harassment. Your support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hope you're doing well. Don't panic if you're watching video.
I've just replaced the white ping-pong room with a giant bar of chocolate.
So, some very interesting stuff going on politically at the moment.
And more than politically, to me, this is in terms of sophistry and philosophy a very, well, let's just say, teachable moment.
So Al Franken has just resigned.
He announced this shortly ago.
And it's really, really fascinating, all of the threads that are going through American politics at the moment.
So we're going to have a look at the speech, and I really want you to understand how this language works and what it means.
So he starts by saying, I won't read the whole speech, but he starts by saying, a couple of months ago, I felt that we had entered an important moment in the history of this country.
We were finally beginning to listen to women about the ways in which men's actions affect them.
That moment was long overdue.
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.
Now, this is very interesting.
The language, none of this is accidental.
The language is very, very interesting.
So, first of all, Al Franken, he worked in Hollywood, he worked on television, he's made a couple of movies, and the idea that he had no idea of any sexual predation that occurred in Hollywood is beyond comprehension.
Especially because he has been accused, I think it's up to eight women now, of groping and grabbing.
And there is, of course, the infamous picture of him grabbing at the woman's breasts on the airplane when she's fallen asleep.
So the idea that this conversation, he knew nothing about any form of sexual predation upon women beforehand, but he welcomes a conversation that kind of comes out of nowhere.
Well, you know, there's pictures of him grabbing it Joy, the woman from The View, Joy Beher, I think his name is.
And so the idea that he had absolutely no clue, no concept of any form of sexual predation when he'd worked in television, late night comedy television, when he'd worked making movies, when he had been in and around the entertainment industry for decades, come on.
Come on. I mean, you'd have to be naive to the point of being completely vacuous and retarded to think that he'd never heard even the slightest whisperer.
So he could have brought this conversation about at any time, but he didn't.
So we're finally beginning to listen to women about the ways...
Now, listen to this too.
We were finally beginning to listen to women about the ways in which men's actions affect them.
That's very interesting.
So let's say someone robs your house and the police show up and they say, we really want to listen to how this robbery has affected you.
Do you see?
The rampant subterranean sexism in this comment is really, really important.
Because if the police show up and say, oh, been robbed, have you?
Well, we'd love to sit down and interview you for hours about how this has affected you.
Do you feel unhappy?
Do you feel unsafe?
Do you feel that you have been violated?
And you'd say, I don't want to talk about my feelings.
I want you to catch the criminal and get my stuff back.
Right? This is very, very interesting.
Finally, beginning to listen to women about the ways in which men's actions affect them.
Not the men sexually preyed upon women against ethics, against the law, and certainly against most companies' policies.
You know, when he's given the honky hands to the woman who's fallen asleep on the airplane, and when she claims like he was stuffing his tongue down Her throat, like he was a proctologist who'd lost a watch.
And the idea that I need to hear how my actions have affected you.
No, what you did was wrong.
What you did was wrong.
It's either morality wrong, it's against procedure for most organizations, or it's criminal.
The important thing is not how the women feel about being grabbed and groped and raped and abused.
It's not how did the actions affect them.
No, it doesn't...
Oh my God, what can you even say?
What can you even say?
So he's talking about how great this conversation is, and then he says, 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.
Ooh! You see?
We're back to how women feel.
How they feel.
What their feelings are.
No. They're not talking about how...
Of course they have mentioned their feelings.
If somebody says to someone, you got robbed.
I'm angry. I'm horrified.
It's not the feelings that matter.
It's not the feelings that can't.
Felt. Feel.
Affect. Come forward to talk about how they felt my actions had affected them.
I was shocked. I was upset.
See? You can't help it when you have this kind of personality.
You just can't help it.
When you're talking about how great it is to listen to women about how predatory actions have affected them, then the first thing Al Franken talks about are his own feelings.
You see how this works?
The first thing that Al Franken talks about are his own, I was shot.
I was upset.
Can't process other people's emotions.
Can't process what has happened to other people.
Can only talk about yourself.
He goes on to say, 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.
See, again, if a man has robbed your house and he's caught and he says, well, I want to be respectful of the broader conversation about property rights and theft and how people feel about it because all of my victims deserve to be heard and their experience is taken seriously, you would understand that he's not saying, I was wrong to rob your house.
I'm a terrible person for having done that.
I really want to do better, and I have to figure out how I ended up to be such a terrible, horrible, nasty thief.
I mean, that would be taking ownership.
That would be taking responsibility.
But if the thief says, well, all of the people I robbed deserve to be heard, and their experiences need to be taken seriously, you'd be like, what are you talking about?
Don't get it at all.
Don't get it at all.
So he's saying all women deserve to be heard and their experience is taken seriously.
Except he's only talking about his own feelings and he's only ever indicating that the important thing is how the woman felt about it, not what he did.
He goes on to say, 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.
Some of the allegations against me are simply not true.
Others I remember very differently.
See, it's really, really important, you see, to take...
All women deserve to be heard and their experience is taken seriously, but they're kind of a bunch of crazy liars.
Hmm, I wonder how that fits together in the Rubik's Cube.
Of leftist thinking.
That is quite something.
Admitting to doing things that, in fact, I haven't done.
Well, there is that picture, Al.
There's the grabby hands picture, where it looks like some shaggy-haired, half-habit alien is trying to implant his young into a woman's Kevlar boobs using his fingertips.
There is that picture.
Now, whether you, you know, say, well, he wasn't making full contact with her breast, it's a very disrespectful thing to do.
Imagine that's your mom, or your daughter, or your wife.
This woman, she had a boyfriend.
It's a very disrespectful thing to do.
Now, this is a great challenge, though, because the left has weaponized women against Republicans, right?
I mean, we'll get to the Donald Trump stuff.
I mean, they weaponized a whole bunch of women to accuse Donald Trump of terrible things.
And then they all vanished when it didn't work.
And of course, there seems to be very strong indications that the women who alleged that Roy Moore, like decades ago, touched them inappropriately and then there was this yearbook signing and so on.
It's really tough because The left, when they have weaponized women against Republican candidates, they have said, well, you have to believe women no matter what.
You have to believe women.
To doubt a woman is to re-traumatize her, is to re-abuse her again.
So they have that standard.
That a woman's claims must be believed.
Now, anybody with half a brain, I mean, not only is that wrong, if women are equal, then their testimony should have no greater weight than a man's.
If we're looking for equality between the genders, right?
So if a woman, like he said, she said stuff, this is why the law can't handle he said, she said stuff.
Because if men and women are equal under the law, then their opposite tails cancel each other out.
I mean, let's say physical evidence of a woman gets beaten up, a vagina is torn, and of course it's rape, no question, right?
But if it's like, well, I didn't say no, it was consensual, I went along, I regret later, I mean, the law can't handle this kind of stuff, in my opinion.
It just can't. There's no evidence.
And so, in order to weaponize female sexual allegations against male Republicans, the left has had to push this narrative that a woman's word is somehow holy or superior.
Women don't lie. There's this, like, Madonna thing.
It's just a Madonna whore thing, right?
That the women that we weaponize against Republicans are all Madonnas.
But when we have allegations against us, well, they're liars and they're crazy.
And that's a very, nobody wants to elevate, like nobody's saying, wants to elevate any particular group beyond the need for proof.
Innocent until proven guilty and so on.
Nobody wants, because of course it's going to be used against you.
Of course it's like the digging through old tweet stuff that Mike Cernovich has so brilliantly revealed lately.
So nobody who's saying wants to say well women have to be believed just because they're women because of course it's gonna it's gonna get blowback.
This is why it's like free speech.
It's like I mean you want you you extend the protection of law to your enemies because you want it for yourself anyway, so This idea that a man is guilty if a woman accuses him just based on her say so This has been pushed by the left.
Well, they've had a very uneasy relationship with it.
I mean they Had horrible things to say.
Hillary Clinton was in charge of coming up with horrible things to say about the women who accused Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton didn't settle with Paula Jones for $850,000, I think it was.
Back when that was real money and not just four bitcoins.
So, the left has had a very uneasy relationship.
When they're attacked, the women are crazy.
When the women attack Republicans, well, it's important to listen to women's voices and they're true and women don't lie and so on.
So, it's terrible.
Terrible sophistry. Terrible.
So, Al Franken goes on to say, 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, that I was prepared to cooperate fully and that I was confident in the outcome.
Now this idea that when you have a he said she said situation when there's no evidence that somehow more investigation is going to happen You can't objectively prove differences in recollection.
You can't. If there has to be witnesses, there has to be some physical corroboration.
He said, she said stuff cancels each other out.
So the idea that, well, if we have more people listen to the he said, she said stuff, then somehow we'll resolve it.
Well, we need an ethics committee.
We need an investigation. This is all a smokescreen.
It's a big delay tactic. You know if you've cleaned out a room looking for your keys and the room is now completely empty it's bare and there are no keys in there and you say well if I get my friends to come over and check out the room I'll find the keys well no you won't and so when you can't get to a legal resolution because it's word against word then having more people look into it oh there'll be a review there'll be it's designed to simply delay and obfuscate and Then what happens is he's politically motivated,
so the ethics committee maybe then finds out that he's innocent.
And then he says, well, the ethics committee investigated and I'm innocent.
It's got nothing to do with anything.
It's he said, she said. So he goes on to say, you know, an important part of the conversation we've been having the last few months has been about how men abuse their power and privilege to hurt women.
Again, that's feeling.
It's hurt. A man Steals your car, your precious car, and drives it into a tree.
Well, are your feelings the most important thing here?
No. So again, to hurt women.
That doesn't make any sense at all.
A woman can be hurt because she has lost a running race.
A woman can be hurt because she lost a job.
A woman can be hurt because her boyfriend dumps her.
All of these are perfectly legal and natural events in the course of human affairs.
So, conflating a woman's feelings of being hurt with being sexually preyed upon, with being raped, with being assaulted in general, with being groped, with being semi-forcibly tongue-kissed as part of a USO tour, I mean, that is not...
Like, conflating that with the generic term hurt is, again, just putting the primacy of female emotion front and center, which is extraordinarily sexist.
So he says, I'm proud that during my time in the Senate, I've used my power to be a champion for women and that I've earned a reputation as someone who respects the women I work alongside every day.
I know there's been a very different picture of me painted over the last few weeks, but I know who I really am.
See, not an argument, not a defense.
And it's funny because the picture of him groping the woman on the plane, that's not painted.
That was taken. It was taken, I think, by his brother, and it was included in a CD of the pictures taken on that trip, on that tour.
So he actually gave to the woman the picture of him groping her.
That's how confident he was that the mainstream media would never report on it, would never reveal it, right?
I've said this before. How confident you have to be to give a picture of you groping a woman who also claims that you were highly inappropriate with her on stage.
How confident you have to be in your power and the fact that you're on the left and you're going to be protected by the media to hand a picture like that to the woman, knowing she can't do anything with it.
That's a kind of sadism and humiliation.
Well, here's the picture, honey.
You can't do anything with it because I'm a Democrat and we got the media.
So you can go and bleed about it all you want.
No one's going to, but you know, this is before social media.
This is before Twitter, before Facebook, before the internet, before YouTube, before people like myself, before other people.
So, your overconfidence is your weakness.
So, a picture has been painted.
A picture that has been painted is a very interesting phrase because it does, of course, indicate that it's not real.
It's not real, which again says, these women are wrong, they're liars, they're crazy, and let's forget about the photo.
Fascinating. So, he then Says he's going to, in the coming weeks, he's going to resign.
Now, he says, and of course, it's impossible for a Democrat to even pretend to take any responsibility without blaming Trump.
I mean, this is almost like impossible.
And he says, I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I'm leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office.
Now, The capacity of people on the left to not hear a simple language, like when Donald Trump says they're not saying their best, some are good people, suddenly all immigrants are rapists, all Mexican immigrants, right?
The capacity to not hear basic phrases, to me, it's like it's a form of mental illness, like it's craziness.
It's literally crazy. Because the Billy Bush tape, it's very clear that Donald Trump says women will let you grab them by the pussy if you're rich and famous.
Something like that, right?
Women will let you.
It's consensual. They consent to it.
They consent to it. That's not sexual assault.
If a woman lets you kiss her, that's not...
Anyway, I mean, but this is just a narrative that they have to have, right?
So no, he did not brag about his history of sexual assault.
And he goes on to say, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.
See, now that's interesting. So the Roy Moore accusers who have 40 years, who have material facts that disprove their allegations, right?
One of the women says, well, you know, after he assaulted me, I got into real trouble.
I got into drink. I got it.
And it turns out that no, she had real trouble before.
So, and I won't go into all of these details.
You can look them up if you want.
So the way it works, you see, for those who are trying to follow at home, the way it works is, if you are a Republican and you're accused of something that happened 40 years ago, it's absolutely true, right?
Now, he doesn't say a man who has been accused of repeatedly praying on young girls.
No, no, no. And a man who has repeatedly prayed on young girls.
Roy Moore, right? So those allegations...
are all absolutely true because they're made against the Republican but the allegations against him are false or the women are misremembering or there's a dispute so his accusers are wrong or liars or at least there's a different memory but Roy Moore's accusers are absolutely completely and totally true do you see how this like holding this kind of double think Is indicative of,
to me, a debilitating disconnection from reality, to put it, as nice as humanly possible.
So anyway, he goes on to try and provide this big speech about follow your dreams, climb every mountain, blah, blah, blah.
So he goes to say, what I want you to know is that even today, even on the worst day of my political life, I feel like it's all been worth it.
He also says he wouldn't change a thing.
He wouldn't change a thing that he's done.
Wouldn't change a thing that he's done.
So when someone is... Okay, I won't get to that in a sec.
He goes on to say, politics, Paul Wallstone told us, is about the improvement of people's lives.
I know that the work I've been able to do has improved people's lives.
I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
And I assume that he just means his political career, but it's kind of ambiguous.
I assume that he wouldn't grope the woman on the plane again and have a photo and give the photo to the woman as part of a package.
I assume that he wouldn't do that again.
But politics is about the improvement of people's lives.
And it's one of these big fundamental questions is why do you need the government to improve your life?
Why can't you improve your own life?
Why can't you keep your own money, have your own freedom, have your own liberty, have your own community, and improve your own life?
Why do you need the government to improve your life?
How sad is that?
What a perpetual child in your mind and heart you would have to remain in order to feel that you need this big agency of coercion, of violence, of debt and plunder and war.
To give you a better life.
Why would you need that? Why can't you make your own life better?
Why can't you be responsible for yourself?
Why do you have to remain a perpetual child?
And he talks about how proud he was.
And he also talks about his very narrow victory in Minnesota.
And this is the basic reality that he won because the left had imported massive Tens of thousands of Somalians to live in Minnesota.
Those Somalians all voted for the left.
I assume they were ordered to because it's not like they just landed in America and got the entire history of Western democracy and free speech and property rights, the separation of church and state.
They were told they were ordered to vote for Al Franken and Al Franken then cast the deciding vote for Obamacare.
So because there were Somalians imported by the boatload into America to vote for the left, America's got Obamacare and then the left claims to be genuinely confused why people whose premiums have gone up three or four times and who have worse coverage and higher deductibles, why people would have any problem with immigration, third world immigration, when the only reason that the government was able to take over about a fifth of the US economy was because of third world immigration.
People are confused by that.
But of course, there's no reason to be confused by that at all.
So, the thing I wanted to mention, sort of the final point is this.
What the hell? So, if you're resigning, it's because you did something wrong, right?
I mean, if you didn't do anything wrong, then resigning is betraying your principles, it's betraying your voters, it's betraying your party, it's betraying your legacy, it's betraying...
You don't resign if you've done nothing wrong.
I don't back down when I haven't done anything wrong.
If I said something wrong, I'll correct it.
I don't back down when I've done something wrong.
What's the point of having principles?
If so, well, I'm unpopular, I'll hand them all over.
And so he's resigning maybe because Roy Moore is doing so well, but he's resigning.
So then he's saying he did something wrong.
Now, if he's saying he did something wrong, why is he calling all of the women who accuse him wrong or liars?
If they're wrong and if they're lying, you don't give up your seat.
You don't. Why?
Why would you? And he's like, well, you know, there's this big ethics investigation that could be coming up and it might distract me.
It's like, oh, come on. If that was the case, then you should have been calling for, as all the Democrats should have been calling for, when Trump was being, sorry, when Clinton, when Bill Clinton was being impeached, when he was going through all of these investigations, when he was being consumed by all these legal problems, then The left should all, and I assume Franken as well, should have all been saying to him, you have to resign because you can't concentrate on being the president when you're going through all this crap.
So this idea, and the ethics investigation is what?
They say it happened, he says it didn't.
What the hell is there to investigate?
What is there to investigate?
You can't investigate.
You walk into a room, your two kids, they're crying, and both of them are saying they hit each other, and the other one started it.
Okay, let's investigate.
I mean, come on. But no, this actually happened 10 years ago or 40 years ago.
How distracting would this investigation be?
He said, she said. No.
The number of people, the number of women who accused him became so great that they became more credible.
And there's probably more to come.
And maybe, just maybe.
Who knows? Is it possible that he's involved in some of these $60 million worth of payouts for sexual indiscretions or harassment or God knows whatever else?
Who knows?
No.
So I have trouble understanding why he's resigning if he didn't do anything wrong.
If you didn't do anything wrong, you don't resign.
You fight. Now, if you did do something wrong, then resigning makes more sense.
But then it makes no sense why if you did something wrong and that's why you're resigning.
