Laughing at Politics: With Al Franken

The Michael Steele Podcast

The Bulwark

Politics, Government, History, News

4.8 • 3.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Steele is joined by bestselling author, comedian and former Minnesota Senator, Al Franken. The pair discuss how our current politics has brought out the worst in people, the various ways "fake news" permeates our culture, the current state of the Senate, the role of satire in politics, the WGA strikes and Lauren Boebert's infamous theatre date.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Michael Still podcast. We're excited to have a conversation with someone
0:08.4	who's had their finger in the pulse of the country for a long time in both the work they did in
0:14.7	politics and outside of politics. Because in many respects, you just can't write some of the political
0:19.6	crazy that we've seen in the past number of years from Trump hiding classified documents near his
0:28.4	toilet to Ron DeSantis saying black people benefited from slavery. It doesn't get any more stupid than
0:35.2	that. And yet it feels like we're living it through one of the worst sketch shows ever written.
0:43.9	My guest today is someone who's familiar with that process and very familiar with the intersection
0:49.3	of both politics and comedy and has shared his talents both on television and in the United States
0:59.3	Senate. Al Franken as a former SNL writer, an Emmy award-winning comedian, a best-selling
1:06.8	author and the former senator from the great state of Minnesota. He is the host of the Al Franken
1:12.6	podcast, which hinting I'm going to try to see if I can grab a seat on. And I'm looking forward to
1:18.5	my conversation without about all things crazy in American politics coming up next on the Michael
1:24.4	Steel podcast. Hey everybody, welcome to the Michael Steel podcast. This is gonna be a good one
1:38.3	today. This guy, you know, I used to battle against him at one point and just because he was just
1:48.2	a commonsense Democrat. I had to find a flaw somewhere when I was R&C chairman and Al Franken was
1:56.5	doing his thing in the Senate. It's real, real treat to have you here as part of the conversation
2:03.6	today. I'll welcome. Oh, thanks for having me, Michael. Treat to be with you. Yes, yes, it's a lot
2:10.1	of fun and there's a lot of good stuff going on. We'll see. We'll see if it's a lot of fun.
2:14.0	I think it will be I think there will be some things that we may agree on. Some people we certainly
2:24.3	will agree about. You know, I just I'm looking at stuff that's going on right now as we get set
2:30.9	up. You've got the second Republican debate coming up in about a week. You've got, you know,
2:39.4	Ron DeSantis and and Trump and all of these players who really are just doubling, tripling down
	...

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