What happened to believing women when they speak out against powerful male accusers? On Thursday, evidence broke of a 2006 incident in which Democrat Al Franken groped and forcibly kissed TV and radio personality Leeaan Tweeden. Photographic proof backs up her claim.
Yet, MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt described the now-Senator’s predatory behavior this way: “[Franken] took a picture, which his office now says was of a joke, that showed him potentially — not actually groping — but mock-groping her while she was asleep.”
In the noon hour, Hunt repeated her mild description. This time, she didn’t cite the Franken staff and made it her own: “Then she also published a picture that was given to her of her asleep with Senator Franken mock-groping her.” This isn’t how Tweeden described the unwanted attention. She didn’t offer qualifiers such as “mock-groping” or “not actually groping”:
It wasn’t until I was back in the US and looking through the CD of photos we were given by the photographer that I saw this one:
I couldn’t believe it. He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep.
I felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated.
How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?
Doesn’t Tweeden have a right to be believed on her own terms and not have a journalist downgrade her claims against a liberal, Democratic senator?
Later on MSNBC, host Andrea Mitchell described what Franken did as “groping” and didn’t qualify it.
(First reported by MRC News Busters) https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2017/11/16/not-believing-victim-kasie-hunt-frankens-action-not-actually (November 17, 2017)
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