Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
President gambles with Franken tweets
Trump, who’s been accused, silent on Moore
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has steadfastly refused to answer questions about Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama accused of molesting a teenage girl and making advances on others decades ago. Yet hours after a radio news anchor accused Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat, of groping her during a 2006 USO tour, Trump pounced on him with a pair of damning tweets.
The president was taking a gamble, as he often does, reflecting the lesson he learned last November: He can write his own political rules.
Trump withstood multiple sexual harassment allegations and the release of the vulgar “Access Hollywood” recording to win election. Now he is betting that in this highly partisan environment, he is free to weigh in on controversies involving other men — particularly if they’re Democrats like Franken and the now deposed movie producer Harvey Weinstein, the party donor whose actions spurred the national discussion of sexual harassment.
Trump’s reactions fit within his broader political instincts: stay on the attack, always, even in cases where he is vulnerable himself.
They also serve a distinct political purpose: expanding the focus from alleged sexual actions by a Republican candidate to Democrats as well, effectively making the topic of sexual harassment a bipartisan liability.
When the “Access Hollywood” video was released a month before the election, and Trump was heard bragging that he could kiss women and grab their genitals against their will, many Republicans abandoned him and urged contrition.
Trump went on television and flatly read an apology for his words, then zealously shifted into offense. At the second presidential debate, days after the tape was released, he appeared with several women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misdeeds decades ago. Later, when more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct, he threatened to sue his accusers.
He failed to follow through, but continues to contend that all of the women who have accused him are liars, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said last month.
Sanders brushed past the president’s own history with a novel strategy — blaming Franken because the senator had apologized for a physical assault.
“Sen. Franken has admitted wrongdoing and the president hasn’t; that’s a very clear distinction,” Sanders said Friday when asked why Franken’s single accuser should be believed and Trump’s multiple accusers should not.
She bluntly turned down a suggestion that Trump’s actions be examined, as Franken’s will be by the Senate Ethics Committee.
“The American people, I think, spoke loud and clear when they elected this president,” Sanders said.
Implicit in the Trump approach is his and his aides’ confidence that he has absorbed the political damage from his own past, while Democrats, who depend heavily on women voters, may have more to lose now.
“Even before the president weighed in, folks were already trying to attack him,” over Moore and his own history, said a political ally in regular contact with the White House who requested anonymity to speak about political strategy.
In Franken, “the president basically had a free shot on goal” to “remind people that Democrats have some serious problems on their end,” the ally said.
Yet Trump also seemed to be relying on pure gut when he started tweeting about Franken, just after 10 p.m. Thursday, less than 48 hours after returning from an exhausting five-country trip through Asia.
“The Al Frankenstien picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 while she sleeps?” Trump tweeted, misspelling Frankenstein.
Ten minutes later, he added: “And to think that just last week he was lecturing anyone who would listen about sexual harassment and respect for women. Lesley Stahl tape?”
The first tweet referred to a photograph of Franken putting his hands near the breasts of a sleeping Leeann Tweeden, a Los Angeles radio news anchor who accused Franken of groping her and of an aggressive kiss during a rehearsal for a skit he had written.
The second appeared to refer to a skit Franken had discussed while working on “Saturday Night Live” that involved drugging and raping CBS reporter Lesley Stahl. The reference was included in a 1995 New York magazine article.
Franken, who joined the Senate in 2009, apologized to Tweeden on Thursday in two statements and said he would fully cooperate with an ethics investigation. Tweeden said in a CNN interview that she accepted the apology.
Trump said during his Asia trip that he would have more to say about Moore when he returned home. But he has ignored repeated questions from reporters since then and left it to Sanders to offer bare-bones comments.
Sanders said Trump believes Moore should step aside if the allegations are true, but she would not say what the president would take as proof. Other Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have been more forceful, calling Moore unfit for the Senate, urging him out of the race and raising the specter of possible expulsion if he is elected.
While Trump sees an opening to make life more difficult for Democrats, it is also true that Republicans’ internal politics make his delving further into the Moore race complicated.
Trump did not endorse Moore in the primary, spurning the desires of some of his anti-establishment supporters. McConnell, Moore’s establishment nemesis, is a subject of disdain to conservative media outlets such as Breitbart and Trump’s most fervent backers, giving Trump reason to stay out of their fray.
Marc Short, Trump’s director of legislative affairs, was eager to move on from the subject while appearing on CNN on Friday. Time after time, he said Trump needed to say nothing.
“The people of Alabama are smart enough to make a decision for themselves,” Short said.