“Can’t imagine why.”
Former President Bill Clinton, who has been accused by several women of sexual assault, ignored a reporter who asked a question about the claims against Senator Al Franken. prompting an NBC anchor to sarcastically state that she “Can’t imagine why.”
NBC correspondent Tammy Leitner described her exchange with Clinton who is in Puerto Rico on a Clinton Foundation trip to survey hurricane damage and relief activity:
“I asked him about the senator’s recent comments, and he looked at me, kind of half-smirked, and kept going,” Leitner told anchor Kasie Hunt, who had asked her if she had confronted Clinton about the issue.
So, Clinton “smirked,” in response to a question about an elected representative being accused of sexual harassment.
How telling.
“He wanted nothing to do with that, so he didn’t give us an answer,” Leitner added.
“Can’t imagine why,” Hunt replied.
It was a rare moment on MSNBC where the female reporters appeared to deviate from the company policy of downplaying charges of sexual harassment against leftist figureheads.
In other programming aired Monday, Katy Tur and guest Rebecca Weir openly downplayed the charges against Franken, suggesting that while “good people can do bad things,” Franken shouldn’t “lose everything [he’s] worked for,” “negat[ing] years of good.”
In addition, Tur repeated a statement from Franken’s female ex-staffers, who attempted to defend the Senator, describing him as “a champion for women both in the legislation he supported and in promoting women to leadership roles in our office.”
Meanwhile, MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle warned that being too hard on Franken for what he did could lead down a “slippery slope.”
“I’m just speaking as somebody who spent 15 years of her life working on Wall Street. But if we’re gonna start to go after everyone in every power industry for something like a butt slap, I’m worried that there’s going to be no one left running anything,” she stated.
Remarkable considering that the women who have spoken out about Franken are alleging that he forcibly kissed and groped them without their consent.
