Al Franken Warns: ‘Disinformation’ in United States is Becoming a ‘Very, Very Dangerous’ Situation
Former Senator Al Franken made a rare cable news appearance Monday morning and spoke with CNN’s New Day co-anchors Brianna Keilar and John Berman about a number of political topics of the day. But it was his dire warning of our current political media landscape that is likely the most eyebrow-raising, at least for readers of a website the covers the intersection of media and politics.
After speaking about the current state of the Covid-economy and a lackluster jobs report last week, Keilar asked her guest about what looks like the now-inevitable prospects of pro-Trump Elise Stefanik replacing Rep. Liz Cheney as Conference Chair. “When you’re looking at this, obviously we see the state of the party, but what does it say to you about the state of the union, about the state of American democracy?”
“We have in this country an unprecedented situation where we have two systems of information, and one of them is disinformation,” Franken replied, ignoring the specific drama of House Republican leadership and focusing instead on the GOP in general, and in particular, how they are informed.
“The Republicans in Congress seem to be terrified of the Trump people and believe that the only way they get elected is by getting that 84%, 85% of the people that support Trump,” he continued. “It doesn’t matter what the trust is. It doesn’t matter that this is anti-democratic and practically treasonous, and it’s a very, very dangerous situation we’re in, in this country.”
Later in the segment, he was asked to opine on recent comments made by James Carville who blasted “faculty lounge politics” and alleged “wokeness” was a serious problem for members of the Democratic party to which Franken pivoted to former Senator Paul Wellstone, who was a political mentor to Franken until his untimely death.
“Paul Wellstone got re-elected even though people disagreed with him,” Franken noted. “But he was straightforward and honest about it. And when he said we all do better when we all do better, what he meant was is that when we all have jobs, like this big infrastructure package where 80% of the jobs will not require a college degree, many people respond to that and where people will have daycare, reliable daycare so they can go to work and know that their kid’s being cared for. That’s what people care about in their lives.”
Watch above via CNN.
