Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) shrugged off questions on Sunday about whether he supports travel bans and mandatory quarantines in response to cases of Ebola in the United States.
During a debate on Sunday, all eyes at the table turned to Franken as moderators repeatedly pressed the senator to answer whether he agreed with his Republican opponent on imposing U.S. travel bans on West African countries.
Franken explained he was consulting with officials on different measures to take, but the moderators kept returning to the same question.
“I mean, which is it, do you support a travel ban or not?” one moderator asked.
“I have nothing against a travel ban from West Africa,” he said, after several minutes of questioning. “What I’m saying is it is totally insufficient.”
Eventually, GOP challenger Mike McFadden piled on. “I just listened to both of you ask Al Franken three times what his answer was and he didn’t answer it,” he said.
As The Hill noted, other Democrats facing close races have come out in support of a travel ban, but Franken still leads McFadden by double digits in the polls.
Watch the segment below:
h/t The Hill
Reporter: Something something gotcha question.
Franken: Nuanced answer.
Reporter: You must answer yes or no so we can feed the dichotomy machine and rev up the false equivalence capacitor.
Franken: But my position is not that simple and can’t be reduced to black and white.
Reporter: Fine, fine, we’ll just report that it is anyway.
Opposing candidate: Yes, thank you, that would be much appreciated. I’ll be sure to have my PACs divert their ad dollars to this station.
That being said, come the fuck on, Al, this was an easy one.
Sometimes politicians need to show some courage. Sadly, he missed an opportunity to show leadership.
Al is a very, very good Senator. Unfortunately, he is NOT a very good CANDIDATE.
The qualities that make him a good Senator: Knowledge, introspection, detailed information, and nuanced thought.
These are great for a SENATOR, but not very good for a Sound-Bite Campaign (especially one where the ENTIRE MSM is in the bag for the Oligarch-Republican candidate like here in Minnesota.) It was quite clear throughout the entire “debate” (I use the term very loosely) that the moderators were fully in mesh with Mike McFadden’s campaign, lobbing softballs at him while pressing for YES-NO sound-bite-gotcha answers from Franken (and letting McFadden IGNORE questions to go on 2-minute stump-speech replies over and over again.)
Sad, but the Koch-PAC Air-Force has air-dropped PALLETS of advertising money on the MSM in the last month and that has definitely influenced their reporting.
Basically Franken refused to give a half-assed answer to a complex topic because it’s beneath him to do so.
Why in the hell does it matter to the moderators what a politician answers to a medical question?
“Do you support the effectiveness of vaccines?”
“What’s you stance on mammograms before age 50?”
“Do you think a fetus is medically viable before the 20th week?”
Are these freaks concerned their state’s Senator will suddenly be legislating medical protocols?