i mean. you'll get the straight talk in the straight news. questionable. hello i'm tom hartman at washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture we want to make america great again we have to protect the integrity of the vote and our voters.

with donald trump sham election integrity commission now officially up and romney running right to vote in danger as greg palast just a moment and a new bill making its way through congress would make boycotting israel a criminal offense in the united states punishable by up to twenty years in prison this is a dangerous threat to free speech so why are so many resistance democrats supporting it dave mccullough and i see a pool and it's politics. so called election integrity commission met for the first time wednesday the proceedings were streamed live to the public on the white house website but don't be fooled by this overture to transparency there's nothing democratic whatsoever about donald trump's election commission its members are a veritable rogues gallery of voter suppression experts and it is arguably the

single single greatest threat to your right to vote in decades joining me now to explain why is greg palast often bound ation fellow investigative reporting filmmaker and creator of the new documentary the best democracy money can buy a tale of billionaires and ballot bandits greg palace welcome back greg. glad to be with you tom it's always great having you here so what did we learn from yesterday's meeting lookout watch your vote. like you said it's a rogue's gallery of votes suppressors and chris kobach is probably the vote seat in chief in the united states he's the guy that helps swing the swing states for trump in by simply suppressing the votes of minority of minority voters and so now he's been promoting big time in that first meeting of these election taggerty commission his plan to take the cross check system nationwide now we've

talked about that before that's his claim that there are that you know trumps claim that there are three million voters voting twice the list of those three million double voters was created by this kris kobach i have the list they try to keep it secret from me but i've got the list and it's names like you know james edward brown who's both lee voted again as james thomas brown in another state it's about people that are registered to states voting twice in in the same election it just happens to be common names of african-americans age. the national weather service in mount holly new jersey has issued a severe thunderstorm warning four hundred county in northwestern new jersey and western rim county in northwestern new jersey northwestern mercer county in central

new jersey southwestern somerset county in northern new jersey lehigh county in eastern pennsylvania southwestern carbon county in northeastern pennsylvania bucks county in southeastern pennsylvania northampton county in eastern pennsylvania until. at seven pm severe thunderstorms were located along a line extending from near belfast to bethlehem to manning moving southeast at thirty five miles per hour hazard sixty miles per hour wind gusts source radar indicated impact expects damage to trees and power lines severe thunderstorms will be near bethlehem hellertown nazareth bangor argel when to get fast to me east bangor and steuben around seven o five pm eastern forks wilson harmony west east and roxburgh around seven ten pm regal glendon pleasant valley spring town and emerald around seven fifteen pm our

friend and pleasant valley around seven twenty pm glen gardner hampton bloomsbury clough still revere next bill and that's around seven twenty five p m. mr milford could be town in around seven thirty pm allentown to clinton dublin from town pipersville to be on the around seven thirty five pm emmaus ancient gentleman lumberville around seven forty pm other locations impacted by the severe thunderstorms include churchill holding down structure town slum gardens north contrasts aqua village shiners freeman's bridge new bridge and rosette for your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a building this is a dangerous situation the stones have produced wind damage. he's like joe mccarthy and the mccarthy era so i have this list of ten thousand

communists in the state department a well i can't identify any but they're there just trust me no sir i don't trust you there are eighteen thousand there are one hundred eighteen if there we're going to arrest them and put them in jail no problem yeah yeah. the commission opened with controversy when they asked the states for a wide range of voter data the states. at least publicly overwhelmingly rejected that request why does the commission want that data why is it such a big deal to be asking for it and why would a state say that they're refusing to give a when that might not be the case and tell us what's really going on here ok here's what's going on first of all why they would even want this stuff the answer i just told you are two programs that kris kobach is pushing one is cross check so he gets the voter files of all the of all the states he only has all i want to say only it's serious ninety eight million voter files he's received from twenty eight

states he would like the a the remainder of more than one hundred million voters whose names he does not have to put in his cross check database and that's so that's why he wants all the states put forward their files now the question is why would states given their files like louisiana turned over three million three million names of its voter files missing be turned over to two million names both republican secretaries of state said absolutely they would not give kris kobach their voter file but they did anyway yeah it's true they didn't give kris kobach their files to his washington office but he secretary of state of kansas so they gave it to go back at his kansas office. you know so so you know it's just a scam. i mean it wasn't like the tono the secretary of state ozzie and all you know go ahead a republican a republican secretary of state lying to us i cannot believe it but yeah they did i

have the evidence in fact you can go to greg palast dot com i'll show you the chart which by the way to my fellow reporters this was not one of the secret documents that i got through months of investigation it's sitting on the secretary of state's website the kobach website in. the secretary of state of kansas website with each state the number of states that have turned the twenty eight states have turned over their voter files the number of files and including the number of of social security numbers that they've received from the states so you get the whole thing is just hanging out there the law is easy to catch but the reason they don't want to admit it is that even the most conservative the most conservative republicans are actually panicked about big federal lists whether they're kept in kansas or washington because they know that after you ask for the voter files the next democratic president is going to ask for the gun registration files right. that might produce a little more of a response. to the. you mentioned because ski saying that

a million mexicans swam the rio grande of to vote for hillary clinton in california here's chris kobach addressing a similar issue even if you could prove that a certain number of votes were cast by in a little voters for example that when you did you would know you would know that you would know mentioning this you has the president. you know he was speaking of you know we he said we'll never know so it is or isn't true or is it all a bunch of b.s. . it's it's true that he says that well it's it's complete b.s. because you can easily easily find people who are not citizens and also if you get caught you go to jail for teh for five years minimum and then you get deported permanently i mean who is going to do that whether you especially just to vote for hillary clinton what's what's in it for this alien and by the way it's not common for people who are here illegally to hand the federal government to local

authorities their name and address and then show up on a date certain called election day to cast a ballot so it's a would be laughable except that they have been removing people with names like morales with hispanic names from the voter rolls by telling them that they have to take a day off from work go to a court and prove that they are americans it is one of the most vile racist programs i've ever encountered and since you know since the one nine hundred sixty five greg in colorado it's been reported that there's been like a thousand percent increase in people removing their names from the voting rolls whether that means we've gone from you know ten people to two hundred people removing their names or without whatever the about some more thousand and alcohol or other all right so the right wing narrative on this right now is that those four thousand people in colorado who said hey wait a minute taking out the voting poll voting rolls now because of this commission the

right wing narrative is that they're doing that because they all are there on that list illegally and they don't want to go to prison and so they're like oh my god oh my god they're going to catch me is that true. well if they yeah they could catch you beat but if you committed the crime that's why they aren't criminals they're just people who have decided to get panicked that the federal government's going to have their social security number here's a secret the federal government already has your social security number and your birth date your name so you know we're actually getting scared enough that they're denied. please please don't as you know i've been fighting vote suppression for for decades don't suppress your own vote by taking it by taking your name off the voter rolls i hate to say it they already have your last four numbers of your social security and obviously the federal government has it so so please don't don't suppress your own vote don't take away your own rights they already have this information that's the worst worst thing you can do you've got to fight these guys in fact by registering if you haven't yet registered don't let them take away your

vote in fact you know i was just meeting this weekend with the reverend jesse jackson and senator bernie sanders who are joining together to fight this commission so don't surrender by taking your race in your own name from the voter rolls join senator sanders and reverend jackson who are for your uniting together to fight kobach the fight his cross-check program to fight his his kind of. legislative progress against voters of color just real real quick greg we're just about out of time here but is it possible also if those were simply people who had moved and i mean when i when i moved out here in d.c. from portland didn't even occur to me to let oregon know that i no longer live there so for some period of time i was on both voting rolls even though i had no intention of voting in both places could it be that people had moved from denver to new york and then when all this brouhaha started they called up the secretary of state's office and they take me off the list and and colorado is the only state

that's actually reporting that i mean because it's been completely happening. it's happening all over the country but unfortunately it's that on the internet a lot of people are saying take your names off so that they can have these voter files it's a matter of your privacy etc believe me this is not going to protect you from from these snoopers from these official snoopers don't let them take away your rights as an american don't do it to yourself it's electoral suicide don't do it there you go greg palast it's always great talking to do with you my friend thank you so much for dropping by. well. coming up donald trump doesn't understand how health insurance works the evidence in tonight's politics panel with a mcculloch and isaiah pool at the bridge. is a real irony going. to play i think

a responsible way to meet people and there's always a well that's what that's always the next three. or airing out wholesale surveillance is still you have all made while there's room to do so since then trump has used the social media well i always thought of this story because it's garbage and real. i think the average viewer just after watching a couple of segments understands that we're telling stories there are critics can't tell me you know why because their advertisers won't let them. in order to create change you have to be honest you have to tell the truth parties able to do that every story is built on going after the back story to what's really happening out

there to the american public what's happening when a corporation makes a pharmaceutical chills people when a company in the environmental business ends up polluting a river that causes cancer and other illnesses they put all the health risk all the dangers out to the american public those are stories that we tell every week and you know what they're working. with the politicians to do such things to. put themselves on the line. they did accept the reject. so if you want to be president and you. want. to go on to be this is what before three of the people get. interested.

donald trump has the power to force anywhere from twenty two to thirty two million american men women and children to lose their health insurance there's just one problem he doesn't seem to understand what health insurance actually is for more on that let's turn things over to tonight's politics. when they've heard that i've spent a lot of dave on call up harder partner with capital media partners and isaiah poole communications director for people's action and editor of our future dot org and thank you both for being with us tonight great to have you both based on i think it was so donald trump's new interview with the new york times has plenty of bizarre moments but it's the president's comments about health insurance that really stick out during

a discussion about the senate republican so-called health care bill and its impact on people with preexisting conditions trump said and i quote so preexisting conditions are a tough deal because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance you're twenty one years old you start working and you're paying twelve dollars a year for insurance and by the time you're seventy you got a nice plan and that wasn't an anomaly in may just two months ago he told a reporter for the international magazine the economist insurance is your twenty years old you just graduated from college and you start paying fifteen dollars a month for the rest of your life by the time you're seventy and you really need it you're still paying the same amount and that's really insurance so is it just me or does trump not understand how health insurance or even life insurance works i mean it looks to me like he's been watching fox so-called news and watching those ads for term life you know you've seen dollars a month for one hundred thousand dollars riddle life insurance. what's going on

here well you know that the guy is not like a policy wonk. and you think of that's just the whole place. mallon of this is he well he well he's all of the war but i actually don't think the you know there are huge chunks of the republican party who also apparently don't understand how insurance works. when they say that you know healthy people should not be paying for sick people paul ryan said that this week yeah and that's how it sure is works is the healthy people pay for the sick people who have never said i want today you will be the same person and we want more healthy people behind you precisely so i mean what's stunning is that one of the reasons why health and for my side i'm grateful debt we're not moving for the repeal and replace strategy of the republican party. and one of the

reasons is because. it doesn't have any clue he's not he not only is he not selling a plan he wouldn't know how to sell the plan if he actually tried to sell it you know he's a pretty good salesman i mean he sold his way into the white house so it's going to have to be a salesman to get your theory to dave your thoughts on what you did i think is one of those examples where you know that the president may be a little out of touch on this issue the ideas of the modern day equivalent of the president not knowing what a gallon of milk costs. george herbert walker bush exactly exactly or knowing how a scanner worked for what exactly i remember that this is one of those times i'm like really really but ok so one thing that people are not talking about is reducing the cost of health care you know doesn't matter who's paying for it whether it's the taxpayers or whether it's the gov the government would taxpayers or individuals it doesn't matter if you don't reduce the cost of health care your health insurance is going to continue to go up and it's to be sustainable but in

this case i don't know i got up and read exactly what you do what if you have a lot are it in that case let's move along forty three senators and two hundred thirty four members of congress have signed on as co-sponsors to a bill that could very well be the most significant threat to freedom of speech that we've seen here in the united states in a long long time the so-called israel anti boycott act would make it a felony to advocate for or even actively parties. paid in a boycott of israel people found guilty of such activities could face up to twenty years in prison and fines raising from a rate ranging from a quarter million to a million dollars can either one of you defend this straight up authoritarianism and by the way there's there's a bunch of democrats who signed on to this in fact a very prominent one is one of the co-authors of the legislation as well as republicans although it's majority republicans and this is a bipartisan cluster i mean this is there are there are some most of co-sponsors of there are a lot of responses on both sides and what i read who they were it's like really

like you i got your back i'm shocked i'm totally shocked. you know this violates both conservative and progressive principles completely and the constitution is about and you know free speech free speech it's like literally if you speak out against israel you go to prison for twenty is really could have a if you had a similar law i mean the idea is that israel is an ally of the united states and you can't boycott an ally of the united states well that were true back in the one nine hundred eighty s. we would not have a lot of us would be in jail for protesting apartheid against south african government because we called for massive boycotts of the south reagan rebellion would have been down with you as a big fan of apartheid and so exactly and those of us who were fighting for a boycott of the south african government divestiture and cetera would have been jailed well dave you know i remember in zero impact i think was congressman bob ney

who named french fries freedom fries and said you know no more french stuff we don't want french stuff in the in the in the in the office bill in the capitol office building bob is kind of come to a census over the years in fact he wrote a brilliant book about it called sideswiped you know kind of his own political awakening. you know because you've got past that if this law had been a fact you know covering france as well as israel. people would go to jail for talking about freedom fries i mean or maybe that's a stretch but i think that's a that's a that's a good a good analogy though but if the interesting thing was the intercepts they make contact a lot of the members of congress who had signed off on this were either co-sponsors or had said something about it and they all said oh we didn't realize that was in there both but i think that the internet actually only contact the democrats but i'm sure the republicans if they if they had seen what was in there too that would have just gone against every every moral principle that it was as if nature because

after all look at what some of those very republican senators said when there was a democratic law proposal on undo the citizens united ruling and they said well first of member rich people have a right to speak just like ordinary with their money with their money that i agree with you ok so so is this it what does this tell us i mean you know it it seems like maybe the message is that if if a pac if that's who is involved or if some you know pro israeli lobby or pro israeli lawmaker writes up a bill and says to a bunch of people hey it's israel likes it let's do it everybody just doesn't even bother to read it and signs it i mean is that have we reached that there is that one of reflex you know when the comes to israel and when it comes to cuba there's a lot of reflex of you know scrambling to what looks like the most politically safe

position without really thinking through the consequences and we expect better of our lawmakers you know i like to get to quote nancy pelosi i'm going to pass a bill to find out what's in the bill but this will those times when i question a lot of things i don't use a lot of smart legislative directors of policy directors on the hill on both sides and for people not to see how this could potentially be interpreted how did this get how did you hear it this is ridiculous and it reflects fred. reflects poorly on israel i mean it plays right to the stereotypes of of you know israel becoming progressively more and more like a police state with regard to the west bank and gaza in and police states they do things like this that they put people in jail for speaking out and i'm a strong supporter of israel very very strong but i am i have to but i could hear something but i don't i can't condone government saying you cannot you can't say controversial things or even ask questions about the way people do boycotts you present yourself as a country that upholds our values is willing to support human rights of all

people and you know the folks who want to take the extreme position will be on the fringe ok moving along attorney general jeff sessions rolled back more of president obama's criminal justice reform legacy wednesday when he issued a memo making it easier for police to cvs seize the property of americans suspected but not convicted of crimes in fact in many cases even after they've been exonerated this practice is known as civil as set for future and it's been widely condemned by conservatives and progressives alike because it's so ripe for abuse and twenty fourteen federal officers actually took more property from americans than burglars did for the record not only is jeff sessions making it easier for cops to police for profit is order also allows state and local police to circumvent state and local bans on civil asset for forfeiture how is this in any way

conservative in from two thousand and seven to twenty sixteen the d.e.a.'s sees to three billion in cash from individuals who are not charged three million dollars from individuals who were never charged of the crime between two thousand and twenty fourteen police to two and a half billion dollars for the cash and property getting ninety seconds and i'm guessing both of you are it would be only conservative i could even think of a pairing for this and i was was thinking like well ok we want to be tough on crime we want to to appear. on crime i want to go after these people so much we can't but i can't justify going after people private property because they're suspected i can't i talk to i talked about there were friends of mine and i can't get one of them oh i could raise their work erickson over red state i mean you know the conservatives conservative wrote just a blistering op ed on this today as well you know actually i think given what donald trump had said about jeff sessions just yesterday to the new york times he should have taken the opportunity did this morning to resign before you shoot that that stakeout trump all all but said he's not the brightest bulb on the tree i mean

it's like one of them does this kind of think proves it i mean there is literally no constituency for this other than rogue police departments yeah you know which is which is which is a real tragedy. where do you see we have thirty seconds where do you see this going to dave. i will go now where i will i hope someone as he takes us to court i hope someone takes this according to sr a general movement on the conservative side to push back against sessions and trial on this i don't know but i like to see that it's necessary but i mean look he was in the wrong yeah it's wrong i mean you know we all have a movement against them and you're invited to join a. party. and all volunteer for that dave great having you both because they stunk so much and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there get active tag your.

in case you're new to the game this is how it works not the economy is built around core. perforations from washington. the washington post media the media the. voters elected the businessman to run this country business equals power you must it's not business as usual it's business like it's never been done before . what you have for breakfast yesterday why would you put those through the fair see your wife or. what's your biggest fear not going to bid on a hay ride with the less time to read

a book or just say if you ever met the things the best quarterback. that's one topic that doesn't belong in the future now i need to do due to the question more. people have got to know whether or not fair present or support american people deserve to know what difference at this point does it mean must guard against the military industrial complex or we shall never go again i cannot. or should know that there is no magic yet we do what we must with things going. to church doesn't.