Politics and Musings Live with former Senator Al Franken
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It's Friday, June 20th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What A Day. On today's show, we're doing something different. A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with former Minnesota Senator and Saturday Night Live stalwart Al Franken.

Al Franken has had perhaps one of the wilder journeys to politics. From 1975 to 1980, and from 1985 to 1995, he was a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live. But after getting into liberal politics, including a brief stint at Air America, and a few books like Rush Limbaugh as a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, great title, he then ran for the Senate in 2008 against Republican Norma Coleman.

And he won by 312 votes, one of the closest winning margins in Senate history. How close? Coleman didn't concede the election until June 2009.

Franken left the Senate in 2018, but as you'll hear, he still has a lot of thoughts about politics and comedy, including his efforts to help one Republican senator tell better jokes and how he's trying to help the Democratic Party reach out to male voters. We spoke at the Cascade PBS Festival in Seattle, Washington. Here's our conversation. Hello. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited to be back in Big Ten country. Woo!

Welcome to the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival. I'm Jane Koston, host of Crooked Media's daily news podcast, Whataday. And I could not be more excited to introduce my guest. You know him from Saturday Night Live and the United States Senate, Al Franken. So, Senator, or should I call you Al? Fellow podcaster? Call me what my grandchildren call me, Senator. Laughter

No, you call me Al. So, Al, how did you get from writing for SNL to sitting in the United States Senate, an even more deplorable place? Well, it's kind of a long story. I grew up in Minnesota, so that helps. My dad was a fan of comedy, and he loved Buddy Hackett. Some older people here.

So my dad was a big Buddy Hackett fan, and so was I, and a big comedy fan and a big fan of politics as a spectator sport. And he was a Republican until 1964. And what happened there was Barry Goldwater was their nominee, and he had voted against the 64 civil rights bill.

And we used to watch the news while we ate dinner. And I remember in 1963, there was a demonstration down south, and the cops were putting batons on people's heads and sticking dogs on them and fire hoses. And my dad pointed the TV and said, no Jew can be for that. No Jew can be for that.

And so when they nominated Barry Goldwater, who was against the civil rights bill, my dad changed and became a Democrat. And that's when I was old enough to figure out that I was a Democrat, too. So how did you how did your path get from writing for? Yeah, you were writing for your question. Is that is that what you want me to do? It's a thing that would be cool. OK, OK, let me try to do that.

So I like comedy too. And I started performing in high school with a partner, Tom Davis. I don't know if people here remember Franken and Davis. And we were two of the original SNL writers in 1975. And we did the first five seasons. Then we left when Lorne left. Then we were Lorne again writers. We came back five years later and did 10 years with the show.

After that, I started writing some books. I wrote one called Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and other observations. Nonfiction. Yeah. I say the age expanding as I get closer to the present. And then I did another book after that called Lies and Lying Liars Who Tell Them, A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. No? Applause for that? Okay. Okay.

I also did a radio show on Air America, which I... We had a station here in Seattle and I had one in New York, but then we moved the show to Minneapolis and Paul Wellstone was kind of my hero. And in 2002, he died in a plane crash.

just about two weeks before the 2002 election, and Norm Coleman was running against him, and Norm ended up winning that election. And a few weeks after he arrived in Washington, he said to a Capitol Hill newspaper, "To be frank, I'm a 99% improvement over Paul Wellstone." And when I heard that, I said, "I wonder who's going to beat this guy." And I thought it could maybe be me.

So during the 2006 cycle, when I was doing my radio show around the state, I campaigned for Democrats there and people were saying, you know, maybe you should run against Coleman. And I did that and I clobbered him by 312 votes. So that's the answer to your question. What do you think your experience in comedy added to your understanding of politics?

Well, obviously speaking in front of an audience, which is what you do very often in comedy and writing what you're saying, is very good preparation for politics. When you're performing for an audience, you get feedback and there's nothing really can substitute for that. It's different.

than running for office, but I love doing the show. I love doing Saturday Night Live. I'll tell you about one sketch that Tom and I wrote. Do people here remember Julia Child bleeding to death? Remember that? I do not. Perhaps you could... I was born in 1987, so let's just, you know... Oh, okay. Okay, uh...

So Tom and I wrote this sketch. We were watching the Today show in the morning, and Julia Child was on, and she cut her finger. And that gave us an idea. And so the sketch was basically Dan Aykroyd as Julia Child deboning a chicken and cutting her finger very badly and bleeding to death.

It was comedy. Right, yeah. Doing the voice and everything. Huh? The voice of Julia Child. Oh, he was brilliant. Danny was just brilliant doing it. And Tom was under the counter pumping the blood. He had an insect sprayer. And we actually held it a week. We did it in dress rehearsal one week, and we didn't have the blood exactly right, but we knew we had something.

And on air it just, it was just magical. And no, it was absolutely fabulous. And Julia Child insisted when they put her exhibit in the Smithsonian, she insisted that that sketch be on a TV in the set running on a loop.

I didn't answer your question, I'm sure. You know, you got around sort of basically to it, but I actually, you told me in an earlier conversation about a certain other wannabe comedian, Senator from Texas, who may have run some jokes past you. Okay. Ted Cruz was not my favorite Senator, but he was a

attested to be a fan of comedy. So every once in a while on a Monday, we'd come in in the late afternoon or early evening for votes, and he could sometimes come up to me and say, I saw an old repeat of an SNL where you were interviewing, Stuart Smalley was interviewing Michael Jordan, and it was hilarious, and I'm going like, you know what, he's not so bad.

And so every once in a while, he would like, he fancied himself as funny and he would try jokes out on me. So this is 2016 where he's running for president and he says, I've written a joke and I want to try it out for you. And I went, okay. And so he starts telling this joke and it goes on and on, the setup goes on and on.

And at a certain point, I'm guessing that the punchline is "Hillary's phone." And then he says, "Hillary's phone." So I said, "Okay, your audience will laugh at that joke, but I have to tell you that I knew what the punchline was going to be before you said it." Now he gets really mad. "Okay, you tell me a joke. This is Ted."

So I say, "Okay." And I know it's got to be a quick setup and a punchline that he can't possibly anticipate. So I say, "Okay, what don't you want to hear after you've blown Willie Nelson?" And Ted tries to -- and gives up very quickly. And I say, "Okay, what don't you want to hear after you've blown Willie Nelson? I'm not Willie Nelson."

Now, Ted wanted to hate the joke, but goddamn, that's a good joke. It's not my joke. And I'm sure somebody here has heard it and didn't yell out the punchline. So I appreciate that. We'll be back with more of my conversation with former Minnesota Senator Al Franken in just a minute.

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Summer is heating up. The Chi is back on Paramount+. It's the season of the women. This is our chance. It's time to get to work. But the men aren't giving up without a fight. The Chi, new season now streaming on the Paramount+, with Showtime Plan. And we're back with more of my conversation with former Minnesota Senator Al Franken. Let's talk about Donald Trump. What has surprised you the most about Trump 2.0, Empire Strikes Back?

Boy, oh boy, there's so much. You know, there's no Jim Mattises in this iteration. He was the Secretary of Defense, and this time we have Pete Hegseth. So that is kind of shocking to me. Let's see, what else? How corrupt it is, this meme coin. Mm-hmm.

What's that? I mean, that is corruption just writ large and there is absolutely no shame. And the sons are, I guess Donald Jr. is starting this executive branch. Is that the thing it's called? It's like a executive branch. It's a club that you can join for just $500,000.

So the corruption is surprising me. I also just can't imagine giving $500,000 to Donald Trump Jr. It would be safer giving it to a cat. Well, I assume that you get credit for it from all of the Trumps. And it's a bribe, isn't it? I hope that Eric Trump isn't like, what about me? Well, he hadn't thought of it. So, you know, shame on you, Eric. And...

No, I mean, they're giving pardons out for people who give a million dollars. I mean, it's unbelievable. Let's see, what else has shocked me? The executive orders, not the first executive order, but on the first day, we had the executive order which pardoned

everyone who engaged in the January 6th riots. And, you know, Capitol Police died because of that. And it just, I find it nauseating that that was the case. Is this enough? I mean, we could keep going along this. Yeah, we could. We could. We'd just be here all night. But I'm curious how you think Democrats should and shouldn't respond to this situation.

Well, we should express our outrage. We should go out and campaign. I like the fact that Bernie is doing what he's doing and AOC does what she's doing with him. I like that, this is not directly at him, but I like that Democratic members of Congress are going to Republican districts and having town hall meetings.

I think that's very productive. And I think we should be fighting them every inch of the way, certainly on this latest legislation, the big, beautiful bill that is this enormous tax break for those at the very top. And so we should be campaigning against that. And that's...

So something Democrats are kind of obsessed with the idea of messaging, how to message to people. Sure. How should Democrats be talking to voters? Well, I mean, there's nothing magic. Some people are really good at it. We've had two brilliant genius candidates in the last 30 years, Clinton and Obama, and they were very good at it. But I just think that that

The way to talk about it is be genuine, and people respect that. They respect that you're giving them the argument. It isn't magical, and so we need to be pressing it and doing it and continuing messaging our message. There's a lot of talk about old guard Democrats versus the new guard, and there's a lot of value in that conversation because a lot of the party elders are saying,

Elders. Ironically, it seems like one of the best people getting his message out is your former colleague, 83-year-old Senator Bernie Sanders. Yeah, he's great at it. So who do you think is the best person, the best people to be leading the charge for the Democratic Party right now? Well, he's great. AOC is terrific, of course. There are a lot of new people who were elected. Elisa Slotkin,

from Michigan gave the response on the State of the Union Address and I thought she did a terrific job. There's a lot of, you know, Maxwell Frost, is that? Yeah. Who's, I guess, the youngest member of Congress. There's just a lot of people who are very good and we should give them a shot at doing that. Ro Khanna. I think, I mean, it's funny. John Ossoff. Yeah.

I think that it's funny to ask this question while we're dealing with a president who lies all the time and then lies more about the lies that he's lying about. But trust between Americans and the Democratic Party has been eroding for a while, but it feels like with everything that happened with former President Biden, it seemed like that kind of threw a stick of dynamite into it. How do you think Democrats can begin to restore faith with voters who not necessarily

Not you guys. Probably not you guys. But there are lots of swing voters, the people who did go from Obama to Trump to Biden to Trump. How do Democrats start thinking about how to win back their faith and their votes? Well, I think what Biden did was a shame. And he should have stuck with what he said when he ran in 2020, which is that he'd be a transition. And...

Now we say it. But I mean, he obviously did a disservice to himself and his legacy because he had been a good president in many ways. But I can't believe he didn't drop out right after that debate. But he should have done it, you know, two years before. And he should have after the 2002 midterm said that I'm not running and we would have had a process that we would have picked

Someone who I think would have had a much better chance. I mean, Harris ran a race in, what, 100 days? How long was it? It was how long? 107 days. 107 days. Thanks. And completely unfair to her in retrospect, I was hoping she'd win.

Of course, I thought she did. Her debate was terrific. But, you know, in 107 days, you really can't do what, you know, what we needed to have done. And it's a crying shame.

Is there something that you've been thinking about in looking ahead to 2026 and even to 2028 that you've learned that you want Democrats and left-leaning progressive voters to be thinking about that we can take forward as we deal with all of this? To stay active, I mean, to stay in it. I mean, don't, you know, it's easy to throw up your hands and say, I've had it.

And also it's sickening to watch this, what Trump is doing. And it's every day. He doesn't stop. And I think that's part of his plan. That's part of what he's doing. And we have to continue to fight and not give up and fight every day.

Well, Al, Senator, sir, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much. And thank you all for joining me in the audience. And those of you who are at home, you can listen to this episode and other episodes of What A Day at cricket.com slash whataday or on your favorite podcast app. You know, it's just in the app. It's fine. Just look for it. It's fine. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

That was my conversation with former Senator Al Franken, recorded earlier this month at the Cascade PBS Festival in Seattle, Washington. That's all for today. I'm Jane Koston. Thanks for listening. What Today is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Forr. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg,

Sean Ali, Tyler Hill, and Laura Newcomb. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adrian Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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