ABC's Cokie Roberts appears to have accidentally admitted the Washington press corps covered up Rep. John Conyers' sexual predatory behavior.
Roberts said it was an open secret among female reporters that he's unsafe to be caught in close proximity to.
"Every female in the press corps knew that, right, don’t get in elevator with him," Roberts said recently of the embattled Michigan congressman. "Now people are saying it out loud."
Here's a transcript:
RADDATZ: -- But they probably will be talking about. And what about Conyers and Franken? Nothing’s happened since. What happens to them?
BACON: It’s not clear that any Democrat so far have said they should resign. You saw Kathleen Rice. Other than that, you haven’t seen a lot of them.
I’m curious. My question of this whole process is, saying it should go to the ethic committee a real thing or is it just a stalling tactic? And that’s what we don’t know yet. They’ve set up a process, but does the process matter, and is the process going to the lead — like it’s hard for me to see...
ROBERTS: It’s like rehab, you know — he’s going to rehab.
BACON: ...going to do anything other than the obviously. We know what happened, essentially. So, does that lead to a resignation, or does that just lead to a stalling process? And that’s what I don’t know yet.
KLEIN: Can they weather the storm, right? One of these happens, another one happens. And if it just becomes noise, then maybe they can hang on.
ROBERTS: And you know they are so used to it. I mean, the culture of Capitol Hill for so many decades was men being bad. And...
RADDATZ: So, we talk about that. We have talked about it weeks and weeks. But does anything really change?
ROBERTS: No.
RADDATZ: We ask that question. I mean, this seems unprecedented how many. But do you think people are really talking about it as if things will change?
PALMER: I don’t think that the culture has — we haven’t seen major shift, right? And I would also just point out, members policing themselves, a very bad track record of it, whether it’s about these kind of scandals, whether it’s about how they use their finances. There is — nobody is saying that they’re going to change the whole process by which this is done, that they’re going to throw out members if they actually have sexual harassment cases. This is a big problem for them.
ROBERTS: The fact that people are willing to be public can change things. I mean, we all talked about for years.
RADDATZ: A little bit at a time.
ROBERTS: Don’t get in the elevator with him, you know, and the whole every female in the press corps knew that, right, don’t get in elevator with him. Now people are saying it out loud. And I think that does make a difference.