 Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanshow.com. Please, friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, go to DavidFeldmanshow.com and sign up for my newsletter. On today's program, Congressman Alan Grayson, the progressive, Bernie-loving firebrand who speaks truth to power and then cold cocks it. Let's get right to it, Congressman Alan Grayson. This is the David Feldman Radio Network. First of all, let me apologize to you because I rolled out of bed this morning. Howie Klein, who is on the show once a week, he is the founder and treasurer of the Blue America Pack. He raises money for progressive candidates around the country. He also writes the down with tyranny blog. He is unavailable for the next couple of weeks, and I said to him, can you find for me somebody who can fill your shoes? Hint, hint, Congressman Alan Grayson. He said, I'll make a call, and when Howie makes a call, people jump. And I rolled out of bed and I see Alan Grayson in my email and I just wrote back, I just have to do this and you have to put up with this because my mother is going to be furious with me. I didn't call you Congressman. I just wrote you this quick email that said, can you do noon? And then I got my coffee and I went, oh my God, you don't write to Alan Grayson and say, can you do? So I apologize for that email. It was slightly disrespectful. Well, I just want to point out to you that I put my pants on one leg at a time. I put my sweater on one head at a time. That's how brilliant I am. I have two heads. All I am, that's all I ever be. I'm still, you know, the kid who cleaned toilets to get through Harvard. Nothing has changed. You're from the projects in the Bronx. You went to Harvard undergrad. You worked your way through Harvard Law School. You're from the Bronx and you moved to Florida. So you're not that smart. You moved to Florida. No, everybody moves to Florida. Later it's the law. Yeah, but come on. Got a little bit ahead of other people. That's all. I did it in my 30s instead of my 60s. Before we get started, I did a benefit for you with Sarah Silverman at the improv. Oh, that was so wonderful. That may have been my favorite campaign event of all time. And I actually wrote, I have to find them. I know I wrote like 20 jokes just slamming you for you, but slamming you. And I think Breitbart went after us. They said it was inappropriate for a congressman to be mixing it up with Bulgarians like Sarah Silverman and David Feldman. Do you think that's true? I actually think about this sometimes. I love Sarah Silverman. I love Al Franken. I sometimes wonder if we're, I'm not putting myself in the same category as them, but do liberal comedians push voters away? Is it dangerous for a candidate to be too close to comics? Well, you know, you don't see a lot of people's political careers have been ended by a close association with Sarah Silverman or for Bill Maher or any number of other somewhat controversial political comedians. And I would include Sarah in that. I think that her comedy is largely political and sociological and always brilliant. I do know that there's a lot of really craving people in Washington DC and both parties who take no chances whatsoever. And Cower, whenever anybody criticizes them for any reason, I would never think of any time spent with you or Sarah Silverman as guilt by association or from it. There is a sort of an underlying issue about whether the joke is funny or not. You know, if you tell a risqué joke and it's not funny, everybody suffers. But, you know, the test is very simple in my mind. Does it make me laugh? And if it makes me laugh, there's nothing wrong with it. It is true that the event was criticized by people on the far right because they wanted to try to use their whining about political correctness against us. And that happens from time to time. You know, I'll give you an example that's from my own career. I went on the floor of the house to lampoon the Republicans' absence of anything resembling consideration for people's health. I remember vividly you said their plan is for them. Don't get sick. Yeah, I love that. Don't get sick. And if you do get sick, quickly, now in my mind, that is political satire or comedy, if you will, that's in line with someone writing the Irish who are suffering through famine should maybe consider eating their own children. Jonathan Swift. Jonathan Swift wrote that a couple hundred years ago. I can't imagine why anybody would be offended by that. But the Republicans immediately, the next four speakers on the floor of the house, you can actually go back and look at the clip on Two-Span, all said that was terribly, scolded me basically, scolded me for satire. And then it became sort of an urban legend that what I did was somehow to be equated with Joe Wilson shouting at the president in the midst of speech UI. Every time anybody mentioned Joe Wilson, the Republicans have to somehow counter with Alan Grayson. So clearly it is a political tool that the other side uses from time to time to try to put us back on our heels, make us embarrassed by being funny, by being clever, by using literary illusions or figures of speech or other criminal acts in the body policy. And I don't buy it. I just don't buy it. But I think it's okay to be funny. I'm happy that people who have a sense of humor support me and that includes you. Thank you. And you also supported Bernie Sanders in the last election. And you're a progressive. You've been called a loudmouth demagogue, not by Republicans by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. No, that, no, I'm kidding. Sorry, that is not true. Debbie and I have a very constructive relationship by respect to her. She's, you know, I know that she made some very controversial judgments during the campaign for president. But Debbie would never say that about me. Okay. You are here by courtesy of the great Howie Klein. I would like to call this up with tyranny. Howie Klein writes down with tyranny. I would like to call this up with tyranny because I think Congressman Alan Grayson is the other side of the populist coin when it comes to Donald Trump. And had you been running for president as a progressive or had Bernie Sanders made it to the top of the ticket with the Democratic Party, I would be all in favor of up with tyranny. Fascism, as long as it's progressive fascism, I'm joking around. But are you afraid of Trump? Do you think his days are numbered, or do you think we're one terrorist attack away from absolute tyranny? I wouldn't say afraid as though I were to use him sort of afraid for the future of the country. You know, it is remarkably fortunate that someone who was as clownish and stupid during his campaign, was fortunate for the country that someone who then wins the election, if you want to call it that, turns out to be equally clownish and stupid as President of the United States because that has actually slowed down his momentum. Let's think what would have happened if his inauguration speech had been one that sort of tried to placate the millions upon millions of voters who voted against him and said we're going to get on with the business of the country now. I don't think it's going to happen if we don't implement the right-wing agenda without the enormous stalling that's taken place because he is a corrupt fool. That would have been an even worse-case scenario than the scenario that we're experiencing right now. But yes, I mean, there was a British prime minister who was asked after his election, what do you think will determine whether you're a successful prime minister or not? And his answer was events, dear boy, events. No market crashes, no serious wars. We continue to send our drones and bomb in any number of different places, but that's not even considered to be a war any longer. No earthquakes or other natural disasters, no hurricanes ripping through Florida. Nothing has really happened since Donald Trump has been president other than his self-immolation. And that's fortunate for all of us, but it doesn't have to be that way. And I am worried and concerned for the country. I'm not afraid of him. I'm afraid of what would mean for the country if we do face some real challenge, particularly an economic one. And we have an oath in the White House who has no sense of what it's like to live in the lives of ordinary people. I feel bad about that. He thought he was taking a constitutional oath. When? Right. Well, on a serious note, it marks the one-year anniversary of the worst mass shooting in American history that took place in your district in Orlando, Florida at the Pulse Nightclub, a gathering place for the... Eight blocks out of my district. Sorry, eight blocks out of my district. But yes, the first responder came from my district and was there in a few minutes. But go ahead. I don't want Fox News to be running story later on today about how Alan Grayson lied about the Pulse Massacre. So it was eight blocks outside the district. Right. But your district has been redrawn more times than my family portrait. Right. That's correct. My chin. Can't you bring the chin? I shouldn't be making jokes. Imagine had that shooting taken place today as opposed to last year. What do you see happening with Trump in the White House? Well, I think that it would have been used as a distraction at least temporarily. The White House machinery would have tried to use it to try to get people to stop thinking about the theft of our election machinery to stop thinking about the betrayal of the country to Russians in exchange for large amounts of campaign support and cash and so on. Basically, I think the White House machinery would have tried to change the subject from the first 48 hours or so. I think Donald Trump would have tweeted out something like, too bad, all the patrons weren't carrying heat. And then, of course, the effort at changing the subject would have collapsed. And he would have embraced the LGBT community as a cloak to push his anti-Arab travel ban and gun rights. All in the name of protecting the LGBT community. Well, actually, it's very interesting that you mentioned that because it's true that it was an LGBT nightclub but it's supposed to be known very much at the time. It was an Hispanic night at the club. So well over half of the victims were Hispanic at night. And in Orlando, we have an international Hispanic community. It's not like some parts of the country where we've been in large Hispanic communities locally for 300 or 400 years. That's not the way it is in Orlando. Generally speaking, a lot of our Hispanics are first generation or second generation in the continental United States. Puerto Ricans are citizens automatically. What I'm referring to is the fact that two of the victims have parents who were outside the country who would have been affected by a travel ban against Hispanics. And we had to make special arrangements for them to attend my office. We had to make special arrangements for them for the families of their children since they had to come from outside the country from America. It's true that they didn't have to scale a wall in order to get to Orlando. That's not where the wall would be. But at a moment like that you realize that there are all sorts of personal ties that have nothing to do with porters. Let me ask you about Russia. I don't trust anybody. I trust you. I trust Bernie Sanders. It's fine. And everybody else I'm skeptical about. I don't believe there's an opiate crisis in America. I think we have police officers who are just constantly looking for reasons to fund their business. The Russia problem. How big a threat is Vladimir Putin to America, to our elections? Wasn't Jeb Bush a bigger threat to our electoral process than Vladimir Putin could ever be? Scrubbing all the African Americans off the voter rolls in the lead-up to the 2000 election? Isn't that the biggest threat to our electoral process? Vladimir Putin could never do that. Wow. Operation Cross-Check is something that gets no publicity at all. What was that? That was a concert effort by Republicans that removed a million Americans from the voter rolls because those Americans had the same first name and last name as a sub-voter in another state. So, John Smith and, well, you'd be typically talking about minorities that were moved from the rolls, so John Smith would be a misleading name to use. Maybe Harold Washington would be a better example. Harold Washington in South Carolina. Harold Washington in Indiana. Two of them have the same first name and last name. Therefore, they must be the same person according to Operation Cross-Check. He was the mayor of Chicago, wasn't he? I'm just picking a random African American name. Just throwing dirt in your face to get you off your game. But as Greg Palis pointed out and Greg would be a great guest on the show, more than well over half of the people who were knocked off the voter rolls by Operation Cross-Check were minorities, particularly African Americans, Hispanics, and to some smaller degree Asians. And, you know, there's an awful lot of Kims out there. So, for example, this was a crime of a voting crime that took place right in front of our faces. It was made possible by Supreme Court striking down part of the Voting Rights Act because it was implemented without prior approval by the Department of Justice which never would have happened. Just never proved something so stupid. I mean, think about this. If they have a different middle name, they still counted as the same person. If they had a different birth date in the voting records, they counted as the same person. It didn't matter what other information was in the voting records. They're the same first name, the same last name in certain places in the country that were heavily minority. They were struck off the voter rolls on the theory that it was the same person in both places and that person had registered to vote twice. That's crazy. And that happened right in front of us and Vladimir Putin had nothing to do with that. So, you're saying this took place after the Shelby County ruling from the Supreme Court. It started beforehand but it was implemented in large part afterward. The Shelby County ruling by the Supreme Court, which kind of reversed a lot of the voting rights act with the old Confederacy. What it said specifically is that in the parts of the country where there had been demonstrated violations of minority voting rights in those places, and this was in the original voting rights act in Section 5, in those places the Department of Justice has to approve in advance, had to approve in advance any change in voting practices. And that would include striking off people from the rolls because they had the same person last name as somebody else in a different state. That's the kind of change that was possible after Shelby that was not possible without DOJ approval before Shelby. Was Florida being monitored by the Justice Department after the voting rights act? Part of Florida was. We had certain counties that had been established as counties that had violated minority voting rights in those counties. We needed prior DOJ approval, but as a practical matter, since Florida election law is uniform throughout the whole state, getting prior approval in those parts of the state meant getting a prior approval in the whole state. That's just a practical matter. So where was the Justice Department in 2000? If they were, I don't want to call it a consent decree, I don't know what you would call it, but according to the Voting Rights Act we would consider the way African Americans vote in Florida. The other side's argument for what it's worth is that they weren't doing something that was new. What happened in Florida in 2000 was not they struck down people off the voter rolls because it had the first name and last name as someone else. They took people off the voter rolls if they had the same first name and last name as the convicted felon. Which is not the same thing. It's similar, but it's not the same thing. In Florida, to make sure that convicted felons don't vote, in fact, this is really odd, but roughly half of all the people in the country who can't vote because they are convicted felons within Florida. We have almost 2 million people who can't vote and about one, little more than one-third of our entire African American male population is disqualified for voting in Florida because they are convicted felons. So what they did, what the Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, in 2000 in Florida, was she said, I am simply implementing the existing rule that felons can't vote. And that's how they were able to finesse that situation. But you couldn't have cross-check. Cross-check really is something new and even more deeply equal. I was reading the Constitution the other night. I'm serious. And I saw either an amendment or a clause that says you cannot deprive somebody the right to vote because they serve time. Did I misread that? It does not say that. I actually introduced the first constitutional amendment in the 200-year history of the United States that would have made it say that. I introduced an amendment to change the Constitution to say that. But in fact, it does not say that. Now, you might have been reading the California Constitution. You know what? No, I'm sorry. It was the warranty for my breadmaker. Well, you obviously have a very wise breadmaker who's trying to make for social progress. Constitutionally, you can deprive convicted felons the right to vote. And you introduced legislation, constitutional amendment to reverse that. Yes. I mean, honestly, at this point, if we had a fair Supreme Court, Supreme Court might decide that the current law is unconstitutional because it violates equal protection under the law. And even in some respects, violates. I mean, for instance, a convicted felon can vote at some point in his life in all but three states. Only Florida and two other states have your barred forever rule. The fact that you can move from place to place in the United States and in some places you can vote is very suspicious from a constitutional point of view. But we have such a conservative Supreme Court and we've had such a conservative Supreme Court since the 70s that no one has had any urge to have that issue decided by the Supreme Court, which seems to be preoccupied in making the rich richer and the poor poor and very little else. Russia, are they a threat or are we just looking for things to throw dirt in the Trump administration's eyes? Well, you know, those people who have been getting the briefings, I haven't gotten one of those briefings dropped off this in January. Those people who have been getting the briefings certainly seem to think that they are a threat. These so-called intelligence agencies issued a public report a few months ago indicating that they had the Russians had, in fact, Russian government had interfered in our election and the Russian government was responsible for the hacking of the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign staff. The Russians have denied it, but what would you do? I mean, there is some ambiguity at this point because Julian Assange and others have suggested that it wasn't actually the Russians that was the people acting independently of the Russian government like, for instance, some Bulgarian hacker, but the intelligence agencies for whatever that may be worth have come to the conclusion that it was the Russian government that actually did the hacking. That hacking you know, it was a close election. Anything, almost anything could have changed the result of that election. 100,000 votes in three states determined the outcome of that election. So, in a close election, everything matters, and if you take the intelligence report on its face then there's that much at least. Now, there's been speculation which may be well-founded that there was much more. For instance, there's speculation that the Russians took either oligarch money or government money wandered it through various organizations and then injected it into the Republican campaign, not just for president but the Republican House and Senate campaigns as well. There is some evidence to support that. Which would explain why they're reluctant to investigate that. Of course, I mean you know there's a rumor that there's a tape of Paul Ryan talking about the fact that they're taking Russian money. I mean I don't know if it will turn out to be accurate or not, but there is that out there at this point. Also, in addition to that there is some degree of evidence that the Russians did micro-targeted persuasion political ads directed toward voters whom they thought they could persuade. They did some heavy number crunching and then some degree of actual expenditure to message news, including fake news to those voters. These days when there are so many independent expenditures flying around it's always going to be hard to attribute anything to anybody. There is evidence that the Russians had an organized effort to interfere through micro-targeted persuasion advertising to American voters. Honestly, we don't exactly have clean hands in this regard. We have done everything from radio broadcasts to military invasions when other countries do their voting but it doesn't somehow alleviate the problem that things like that happened in the past in the United States and even happen in the future. Noriega just died. Noriega was an elected leader of Panama. To give you one example we invaded Panama, occupied it for a certain amount of time, captured him brought him home brought him to the United States, to our home and then imprisoned him for the rest of his life. So that gives you an idea of the degree to which the United States can interfere in the political processes of other countries. I can give you other examples as well. Juan Bosch was elected if I recall correctly, one Bosch was elected president of the Dominican Republic five times and he served once. We took care of the other four times when he was elected president of the Dominican Republic because we didn't want him to be president. So you know, but that's not the point. Just because these things happen in the past doesn't somehow excuse the Russians doing it to us. It says in my breadmaker warranty that foreign governments cannot give money to candidates. Correct? That's correct and the Citizens United decision actually specifically says that that is still of a constitutional law. Is there hard money and soft money? Is there a work around that the Trump people can claim this was soft money being given to us by Putin, not hard money? Is that a possibility? It would still violate the disclaimer rules because when you when you do an independent expenditure whether it's hard money or soft money and from whatever source you have to identify the source. That's why you hear at the end of every ad saying pay for by blah blah blah blah blah and there's no indication that anybody saw any ads saying pay for by Vladimir Putin. Nobody remembers seeing an ad like that. Before you go and this is an honor to have you on the show. I'm sorry for my jokes. I can't help myself although when you said Bulgarian actor I didn't say Bel Lugosi. I held that but I don't even think he was Bulgarian. Possibly Romanian but go ahead, Hungarian. If I had to guess, I would say someone named Bel Lugosi is probably Hungarian. Okay. Let's go on. In the words of the great Don Rickles that's better? Mm-hmm. Anyway, if you're ever sad and depressed go on YouTube and just watch Don Rickles. It will cure everything. He's a miracle anyway. Well, you know a lot of what he did was he was able to do today. A lot of his jokes would not be accepted today and he could get into trouble that would go beyond the kind of trouble that we saw this past week for Bill Maher. Obviously I would love to talk to you for the next five hours but you have to pack. So before you go Why don't we tell people that I'm packing because I'm going on a trip? We don't want to leave that out there just sort of lingering. Grayson has to pack. That could mean any one of a number of different things, okay? Let's try to be specific about it. I'm going on a trip. And I won't even ask you where you're going. You're entitled to that privacy. Before you go we're obsessing on Russia. We're obsessing on Trump. It's a carnival. It's a freak show. It's bread and circuses. It's MSNBC, round the clock. Meanwhile, you have a guy named Steve Bannon in the White House right now and he wants to get rid of the administrative state but they're using the administrative state to reverse a lot of executive orders that Barack Obama instituted. What are we not paying attention to? What do you think is the single most important issue facing Americans that Donald Trump and Russia is distracting us from? Very simply, if we repeal Obamacare as the House bill would do then 180,000 Americans will die. There it is. Alan Grayson is one of my heroes up there with Howie Klein and Bernie Sanders and I hope you come back and I hope you run for office again. Thank you for your time. And sorry for my jokes. It's fine. As long as they're funny, it's okay. Again, sorry for my jokes. One quick second please. This is the David Feldman Radio Network. For more of my conversation with Alan Grayson please go to DavidFeldmanshow.com and while you're there sign up for my newsletter. You'll also find a treasure trove of all my other shows and interviews. Please make sure to hit the contact button and say hello. Special thanks to Howie Klein from Down with Tierney for helping me get Congressman Alan Grayson to play PFK Studios in Southern California. I'm David Feldman, Medicare for All. This is the David Feldman Radio Network.