“The phenomenon of him in this last election is something we’ve never seen before. “Trump, in a way, is sui generis,” Franken told me this week, backstage at the 92nd Street Y, where he’d just been interviewed by his old friend David Letterman. It’s not a new observation, but the book begs the reader to consider that, while Trump was elected President even after the release of a recording in which he talked about grabbing women “by the pussy,” Franken’s own Senate campaign worried about whether an old “Saturday Night Live” joke about Anne Frank-“I think a bad Hanukkah gift for Anne Frank would have been a drum set”-might be a real issue with voters. Franken notes, too, how, during the Presidential campaign, Trump’s words-unfunny, offensive, untrue-didn’t hurt him with voters the way they would have hurt most politicians.

In his new book, “ Al Franken, Giant of the Senate,” Franken recalls his first Senate race, when, to his frustration, old jokes from his comedy career were resurfaced, out of context, by political opponents. Now he’s a second-term senator, still a progressive with unapologetically partisan views, but one eager to explain the new friendships he’s struck up with some of the most conservative members of the Senate, such as Pat Roberts, of Kansas, and Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, who is now the Attorney General and whose wife once knit a blanket for Franken’s grandson.įranken is also a member of a minority party facing a hostile and in many ways baffling new President. “No Joke: Franken Announces Senate Bid,” “No Joke: Franken Wins DFL Nomination,” “No Joke: Franken Wins Recount.” There were fewer “no joke” headlines in 2014, when he ran for, and easily won, reëlection. Senator Al Franken, of Minnesota, hates headlines that say “no joke.” He was subjected to a perhaps unprecedented run of them back when he was running for office for the first time, in 2008.

Al franken new book