Al Franken Recounts the Extraordinary Moments Leading Up to Health Care Vote

The Minnesota senator also reveals when he realized John McCain might vote “no.”

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) appeared on the Late Show on Tuesday to unpack the dramatic moments leading up to last week’s health care vote, telling Stephen Colbert that he had a hunch Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) might shoot down the Republican bill to repeal Obamacare when a certain someone left the chamber.

“He didn’t want to be at the scene of the murder?” Colbert joked.

“The last vote he was there for the entire vote,” Franken explained. “And he had left the room, and that told me that [McCain] was going to vote no.”

Watch below to see whose exit tipped it all off:

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This is the rubber-meets-road moment: the early days in our first fundraising drive since we took a big swing and merged with CIR to bring fearless investigative reporting to the internet, radio, video, and everywhere else that people need an antidote to lies and propaganda.

Donations have started slow, and we hope that explaining, level-headedly, why your support really is everything for our reporting will make a difference. Learn more in “Less Dreading, More Doing,” or in this 2:28 video about our merger (that literally just won an award), and please pitch in if you can right now.

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