Just a couple hours after this interview with Glenn Beck, former Congressman Eric Massa appeared on Larry King and flatly denied reports that he had groped male staffers.
Asked by King if he ever groped staffers, Massa replied: “No, it is not true, period. I don’t know how else to answer your question.”
That came right on the heels of the Beck interview in which Massa said: “Now they’re saying I groped a male staffer. Yeah, I did. Not only did I grope him. I tickled him ’til he couldn’t breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday.”
But Massa sparred with King several times on the program about the connotations of the term “grope,” saying that “when four guys jump on you to wrestle you to prove that you’re 50 years old, anything can be called anything, Larry. And what it’s all about is innuendo. It’s all about using language to destroy people.”
Here are two of the key exchanges:
KING: You were — you admitted groping — groping…
MASSA: No, I didn’t…
KING: There’s no other way to define groping but sexual.
MASSA: I didn’t…
KING: Sexual — groping is sexual.
MASSA: In fact, I never admitted groping. Somebody was sticking a microphone in my face walking on the street. In an interview, that was an hour long, I described in detail the only incident that I know of that could even come close to that — even come close to it. You’ve got to remember, my staff, some of them with me for seven years. My closest staff guy, 69, 70 years old, my dearest friend, counselor to my children, a friend of my wife, lived in our house for a year. And all the young people lived in our house. We lived in cars, ate day old pizza.
These were relationships formed over the past two, three, four, five years. And it’s not — it’s like a family. And so anybody can take anything out of context.
And again later in the program:
KING: So you did grope someone, right?
MASSA: So, Larry, when you grab someone and you’re wrestling, I don’t know how to describe that word. So if that’s — if that’s the word that you want to have an entire debate about, then I can’t stop you.
KING: No. I’m just asking the question — you said you groped someone.
MASSA: Yes, I…
KING: A lot of people associate groping with sexual.
MASSA: Well, it wasn’t sexual. Period.
Besides the tickling incident, Massa has also said that he tousled the hair of a male aide at a New Year’s Eve wedding party and said, “what I really ought to be doing is fracking you.”
Also, asked directly by King if he is gay, Massa replied:
“Here’s that answer, I’m not going to answer that. In the year 2010? Why don’t you ask my wife, ask my friends — ask the 10,000 sailors I served with in the Navy.”
He added that the question “insults every gay American.”
Watch the video of the exchange:
