Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer, a leading blogger on the Air America scandal, offered the transcript of the other part of the Letterman segment with Al Franken. Unlike the "mainstream media," Letterman at least asked about the Air America financial scandal.
Letterman: "Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like you have a new set there. Is that what it looks like?"
Franken: "Yes, this year we have a new set."
Letterman: "So things must be going well for you."
Franken: (sarcasm) "Oh........yes! No, Air America is doing great. We've got 70 affiliates, cover about 65% of the country."
Letterman: "What was all that talk about money, somebody had money, didn't have money, loaned money, stole money, wouldn't give it back. Any of that true?"
Franken: "All of it, all of it. No, what happened was, we had a guy running the company at first who turned out to be (makes a face)..."
Letterman: "A goon? A thug?"
Franken: "Keep going..."
Letterman: "Idiot?"
Franken: "Worse than that. But he basically led us to believe..."
Letterman: (says something bleeped out)
Franken: "There you are. There you are. You see, I thought I couldn't say that. So anyway, he told us we had enough money to stay on the air for three years before we made a profit and it turned out to be three weeks."
Letterman: (laughing) "So, just a little bookkeeping error."
Franken: "So, we lost two of our stations right away and we had five at the time and they were Los Angeles and Chicago (laughing). So we had to wait a while until we got very good ratings and now we have 70 affiliates."
