In what is being described as a “trainwreck” interview with the Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers, Downsizing star Matt Damon excused Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) alleged serial-groping as a “terrible joke” and says that he can “can work with” Louis CK’s after he admitted to masturbating in front of horrified women and subordinates.
“The Louis C.K. thing, I don’t know all the details … but I did see his statement,” Damon said, adding, “When he came out and said, ‘I did this. I did these things. These women are all telling the truth.’ I just remember thinking, ‘Well, that’s the sign of somebody who — well, we can work with that.’”
Damon added that he is a “fan” of Louis CK’s but dismisses his behavior as “just kind of shameful and gross,” adding that “I don’t imagine he’s going to do those things again … I imagine the price that he’s paid at this point is so beyond anything that he — I just think that we have to kind of start delineating between what these behaviors are.”
Damon also dismissed Franken groping a sleeping woman — Leeann Tweeden, who also claims he forcibly shoved his tongue down her throat, an allegation consistent with others against the disgraced senator.
“When you see Al Franken taking a picture putting his hands on that woman’s flak jacket and mugging for the camera …that is just like a terrible joke, and it’s not funny. It’s wrong, and he shouldn’t have done that,” Damon said.
But Damon then went on to seemingly use the groping photo as proof that Franken is not such a bad guy, “[W]hen you talk about Harvey [Weinstein] and what he’s accused of, there are no pictures of that. He knew he was up to no good. There’s no witnesses. There’s no pictures. There’s no braggadocio … So they don’t belong in the same category.”
In an apparent attempt to further exonerate Franken, Damon compared “patting someone on the butt” to “rape,” as though people are making that comparison, and argued in favor of Franken not resigning in favor of an Ethics Committee investigation.
“We’re so energized, “Damon said, “to kind of get retribution, I think.”
Franken is accused of groping eight women, almost all of them Democrats and supporters. One has a photo of Trump groping her breasts. Others are able to prove they had photos taken with Franken when the alleged groping occurred.
While Damon is correct that a man who gropes a woman’s butt should not face the same punishment as a rapist, one has to wonder just how many free gropes Damon would allow Franken to enjoy before facing real consequences.
Moreover, how many horrified women who feel trapped does Louis CK have to masturbate in front of before Damon decides he in fact cannot work with that?
Damon is now facing some serious blowback on social media and elsewhere:
https://twitter.com/SeanMBurns/status/941684652900782081
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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