Al Franken Was "Almost Shocked" by Trump's Speech
Only in Washington, D.C. does the crowd go wild for a U.S. senator.
At the Women’s March on Washington after-party Saturday night, hosted by Funny or Die and benefiting Planned Parenthood, Al Franken, the Democratic junior senator from Minnesota, elicited cheers and applause when he came onto the 9:30 Club stage. “This reaction surprised me,” the former Saturday Night Live comedian deadpanned, “because the White House press secretary just announced that there was nobody here.” It was a not-so-veiled reference to Sean Spicer’s insistence that the media had failed to accurately report the size of the crowds at President Trump’s inauguration - what Spicer falsely claimed was “the largest audience to witness an inauguration.”
“This has been a great day,” Franken continued. “Even better than yesterday.”
In the green room before his brief appearance, Cosmopolitan.com caught up with the senator about the Women’s March, the role of comedy over the next four years, and how he’s feeling now that we have to put “president” in front of “Trump.”
How have the last few days been?
Well, you know, they've been … they've been a little tough. I've been waiting for him to pivot - [hearty laughs] - for a long time. And I came to the event, to the inaugural. I thought that was the right thing to do. And I was very - almost shocked by his inaugural address.
How so?
I thought it was very dark. I thought it was very inartful. I thought it was rude to the outgoing president. And also it felt like he wrote it in about 20 minutes. So other than that, I just was surprised by the speech. It didn't seem like an inaugural address. It felt more like a campaign speech. And it certainly didn't seem to reach out to people.
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You were at both of Obama's inaugurations, and you were at the inauguration yesterday. What do you think it says about our country that Sean Spicer is saying that the media is falsely representing how many people were at Trump's inauguration - from day one of the administration, perpetuating blatant falsehoods from the podium?
I used to write books about lying. I wrote a book called Lies and The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the RIght. You're young, so you may not remember that, or Rush Limbaugh's a Big Fat Idiot: And Other Observations. It now almost seems quaint that it meant something then to be caught lying. It seems like the rules have changed. We have institutions in this country that I'm glad we have. This isn't Russia, this isn't Turkey. So my hope is that these institutions – and one of them is Congress, and the other is the media – so my hope is that this kind of thing will not take traction. We just won't allow it to continue, or it will backfire.
Take me back to that moment with Betsy DeVos, when it became very clear that she didn't know the difference between growth and proficiency. What was going through your mind when you realized what was happening?
When I had my courtesy meeting with her, it became very apparent very quickly that she did not know much of anything about education policy and that her whole experience with education was from her [vantage] point of advocacy of vouchers. If you're going to be taking money from the public school system, and giving it to kids to go to private schools and private religious schools, you have to be accountable for what kind of results they're getting. And a big part of the way that we hold schools accountable is making assessments. So I naturally wanted to know what her philosophy was on assessments. This is something that, as you can imagine, is very central in all the debate on educational policy, and absolutely essential and central to this debate. And so I figured I'd ask her about it. I thought from talking to her, the first day I talked to her, that there was some chance that she wouldn't know this. But this is like asking a prospective football coach how many yards are there in a first down. You really wouldn't want to hire a coach who was unaware that there are 10 yards to get a first down. [laughs] And she didn't know that. And she didn't know that you had four tries to get it.
What was today - the Women's March - like for you?
It was amazing. I mean, that's why I'm optimistic today. There's clearly - this hasn't happened before. [laughs] And I think clearly there's a lot of energy, and I just hope it continues and that it builds. But I'm very hopeful after today. You see that it's just a broad coalition of people who are coming forward at a time where I think a lot of our basic institutions and traditions that have made our country strong are being threatened.
Can comedy be effective against Donald Trump in the next four years?
I've always believed that comedy and satire are helpful ways of pointing out absurdities. But so much of Donald Trump and what he does is so absurd to begin with, like his press secretary coming out and arguing about these numbers, that I think it's a little hard for satirists.
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