In his defiant resignation speech late Thursday morning, disgraced U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proclaimed himself the victim and blamed his fall from grace on the hurling of false accusations of sexual misconduct against him.
The only responsibility the belligerent and noticeably angry Franken seemed to want to accept is that “in responding to their claims, I also wanted to be respectful of that broader conversation[.]”
Responding in this way, he believes, is what cost him his Senate seat because it resulted in people getting the “false impression that I was admitting to doing things that I, in fact, haven’t done.”
He then came right out and declared some of his accusers liars, “Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently.”
Here is the full transcript of the relevant portion:
Then the conversation (about sexual misconduct) 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 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 I, in fact, haven’t done. Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently.
Other than Leeann Tweeden, who published the now-infamous photograph of Franken groping her breasts while she slept, almost all of his other accusers are fellow-leftists who met Franken at various political events, including a Media Matters party celebrating former-President Obama’s 2009 inauguration and, of all places, the Minnesota Women’s Political Caucus.
Franken has even been accused by an Army Veteran.
In a disastrous series of post-Thanksgiving interviews, Franken admitted that he could not say if more women would come forward.
On Wednesday two more popped up, both longtime Democrats, both reported in the left-wing media, Politico and the Atlantic. It was at this point that Franken lost the support of his Democrat Senate colleagues, and now he seems angry about it, even though he was allowed six free gropes before the bottom fell out, including this one…
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