Michele Bachmann eyes Franken's Senate seat

Former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who became a household name for her unrelenting campaign against LGBT rights, says she might run for former Sen. Al Franken’s Senate seat representing Minnesota.

Bachmann, who became known as “crazy eyes” during her 2012 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, made the announcement on The Jim Bakker Show last week. She told the disgraced televangelist and convicted felon that her goal is to take fundamentalist Christian values that she and Bakker share to the White House.

She said it isn’t easy to be her kind of Christian in Washington. She served on Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council during his campaign.

"If you're trying to go against the tide in D.C., if you're trying to stand for biblical principles in D.C. and you stick your head up out of the hole ... the blades come whirring and they try to chop you off,” she said.

Bachmann represented Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District from 2007 to 2015. She decided to bow out after her outlandish public behavior dimmed her prospects for re-election. For instance, just minutes into a speech at the Iowa State Fair in 2011, Bachmann became hysterical and fled the stage due to the heckling of a gay teen.

At the time she decided not to seek re-election, Bachmann’s presidential campaign was under investigation by the Federal Election Commission over alleged improper payments to an Iowa state senator who was the state chairman of her 2012 presidential run. One of her aides also accused Bachmann of other FEC violations.

At the time, Bachmann and her husband ran Christian “counseling” services that offered to help “pray away the gay.”

Bachmann told Bakker that unspecified people were trying to coax her into running for Franken’s seat.

During her appearance with Bakker, who was also accused of raping a female employee and molesting several males, Bachmann warned that the Democratic Party dropped Franken because its leaders want to be in a morally superior position so they can taint Republicans with false allegations in future races.

"I'm not saying that (Franken) didn't do some bad boy things. I think he did,” Bachmann said. “But he didn't do what Harvey Weinstein did. ... But the Democrat party, they even admit they threw Al Franken under the bus because they wanted to look pure," she said.

As Bachmann spoke with Bakker, a scroll across the bottom of the screen offered cheap groceries in bulk to help prepare viewers for the Rapture.

Until the next election, Franken’s seat will be filled by Minnesota Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, a Democrat.