The New Yorker Radio Hour - Senator Al Franken Really Is Senatorial

Episode Date: August 8, 2017

Senator Franken and David Remnick discuss the health-care vote, the Russia investigation, and how his sense of humor has been a liability     New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent. I think it'd be interesting to really try to unravel what his ties. There's this sort of country city divide for their own convenient. And it's not clear where it goes next. From one world trade center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Eight years into Al Franken's service as a U.S. Senator, It's getting a little hard to remember the original. That Al Franken was a comedy writer, one of the founding writers on Saturday Night Live, and he put on really tight pants one night and gyrated obscenely in a killer imitation of Mick Jack. You might want to go to YouTube and watch the whole thing. You know, and it's also pretty hard to remember that the senator from Minnesota was also the guy who did Stuart Smalley's Daily Affirmations. Okay, today I've decided to talk about something I really know nothing about, politics.

Basically, I'm very apolitical. I guess the only politicians I've really ever admired are Martin Luther King, although a woman in my Al-Anon group said he was a compulsive sex addict, and Mahatma Gandhi, who a woman in my overeaters anonymous group said had an eating disorder. But that's okay. No one is perfect. Al Franken took a turn toward politics with books like Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat idiot. But he eventually gave up the books and the sketches to make a serious run for office and to become a serious senator.

Now he's returned to form. He's got a new book out called Al Franken, Giant of the Senate. The cover shows him as a parody version of a distinguished senator in a sober suit with a fireplace roaring behind him and his hand resting gently on. a globe. It's a good joke, but Franken has, in fact, become genuinely senatorial over the years. In the confirmation hearings for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, it was Franken, who asked an extremely pointed question about Russian contacts with the Trump campaign. Sessions gave an evasive answer that caused a ripple effect leading to his recusal and eventually to the hiring of Robert Mueller as special investigator. I spoke to Al Franken last week.

The other night, John McCain gave a remarkable speech, and he said many things, and one of them was that the Senate, as an institution, is not overburdened by greatness. And when you go into the Senate every day, are you filled with a feeling of awe? Or as he was expressing, a kind of, not just disappointment, but almost a revulsion about what's happened to the deliberative body. I get all of those, everyone. You know, I have a number of my colleagues who I am in law of. Who are there? Oh, Sheldon White House, just on policy after policy, but especially on things like climate change and campaign finance reform.

He's been such a leader. I'm in law of Dick Durbin. Dick Durbin, he can, better than anyone I know, just talk extemporaneously. I thought it was an awesome move by Chuck Schumer when John McCain, who I'm in awe, put his thumb down, and there were some applause, I think, from staff. And Chuck turned and went, no. That there shouldn't be applause. Absolutely.

Why is that? That's not the decorum of the floor? Yeah, and we shouldn't, no gloating. It was a big victory because it meant that we're going to have to, that we get to work in a bipartisan way to address what in the ACA isn't working as well as it should. So my understanding was that the Republicans knew that John McCain was going to vote against with the so-called skinny health care bill, but the Democratic side did not. You didn't know that this vote was coming?

I did not know this for sure. I didn't know it. And I started at a certain point because of body language. It started, see, I have what's called emotional IQ. What was the body language? The body language was Pence talking to Murkowski and getting nowhere and her jaw being set. and then a pen's walking out of the room. Right there on the floor, during the deliberation.

And if they had the votes, he would have sat in the chair, like he did, I guess, the previous day, when they got the 50 to, for him to cast a type of breaking vote. Apparently Hillary Clinton's new book is going to be called What Happened? Yeah, I actually think it should be. What happened? I mean, in other words, there should be a question mark. Can you answer that question, though? I mean, let's go back again. We know all the litany of the usual.

I can tell you what happened. Go ahead. Okay. She and her campaign assumed they're going to win because he had so, in their eyes, disqualified himself as someone in America would trust with the presidency. And it was a whole bunch of things. But, of course, the Access Hollywood thing, I think, was the point at which they went, okay.

Game set match. Yeah, yeah. And then what happened then was, I think they failed to continue to reach out with an economic message to those people who feel really angry in this country because for 40 years, the way I grew up wasn't happening. It wasn't happening that you would, you know, you kind of felt it was your birthright as an American that your kids would do better than you. And that hasn't been happening.

And they're mad about that. And they're seeing very often their communities being hollowed out. You see it in Minnesota? Oh, God, yes. Absolutely. And I think she just stopped aggressively reaching out to those people and explaining

our, not only our philosophy, but policies to make it possible for their kids to have a better life, to have a secure middle-class life. And somehow Donald Trump got to be the, got to attack her as a member of the elites. And of course, I guess, obviously she is. And I think those people who voted for Trump felt like they don't care about us. And then the Comey thing, 11 days before, reopened that again, and that combined with the Russia interference.

What's your understanding of the Russia and the Trump administration broadly defined? Because what it seems to me is that it may not be that the Trump administration or Trump officials, overtly colluded in a kind of spy movie apocalyptic sort of way, but they opened themselves up, Trump in particular, in his business dealings over the years, to compromise in a way that now affects policy. You know, we will see. Mueller, I have faith that Mueller will get to the bottom of this.

I think he's tough, smart. I think he's hired great people. He's hired people to look at those financial dealings. I mean, it's clear. Donald Jr. said in 2008, the disproportion of the money in their operation was coming from Russia. I mean, there's no question. And the Russians have a way of compromising people, so they got them. So I think we will find out that aspect of it, I think, through Mueller.

And that's why I think it becomes a constitutional crisis if Trump fires him. Trump will, if he fires him, it will be without cause, and that will create a crisis. That's why I'm a little disappointed that we aren't focused. It doesn't seem to be, we seem to be focused on what was the Trump campaigns. Did they interfere with? Did you not feel lied to by Jeff Sessions? Yeah, I did. And again, I was, he didn't answer my question.

He answered a different question. I asked him basically, would he accuse himself? It turned out that these reports that members of the Trump campaign had communicated with the Russians and kept communicating with him. And he answered the question by saying, I didn't do that. I didn't meet with any Russians, didn't communicate with any Russians during the campaign. And then not until seven weeks later did the Washington Post come out with it. And at that point, he recused himself, of course.

So that's why this Trump's saying, well, he should have told me he was going to recuse himself before I would have nominated him. He didn't know he was going to recuse himself until he was outed as meeting with Kisleak and the ambassador. And so I think we will find out that aspect of it, I think, through Mueller. Clearly Donald Trump on some level has talent, performative talent, at the microphone. He appeals to people in a way that reaches their gut and their funny bone even, whether you like it or not. And as somebody who spends so much time in comedy and in front of the camera and writing for Saturday Night Live, does he remind you of anybody? I mean, is he an Andrew Dice Clay figure? How would you assess his comedic talent or his, his, his, I don't personally think that he's, I kind of thought he had a sense of humor at one point, early on.

And I, you know, during the campaign, I actually talked to Huma and Hillary at one stop. And they said when he's on, they watch him because it makes them laugh. but I'm not sure that was a kind of laugh that he was going for. I guess he makes his audience laugh, but I've noticed something which is, and I still haven't seen it happen, I've never seen him laugh. Certainly not at himself. Well, just never seen him laugh.

Period. Yeah, he's like some fairy tale, you know, where someone can get the king to laugh, they'll get half the fortune and the daughter or something. I mean, it is, I've not seen him laugh. Last question relates to your book. See, I laugh all the damn time, even if it's just I made myself laugh. This relates to my last question.

Years ago, I called your office and said, I want to do a profile for the New Yorker of Al Franken. And they said, look, there's nothing we'd like more, but we really don't want to do it because we know where the questions will go. You start asking about Saturday Night Live and the Grateful Dead and drug use and all that stuff. and we're trying, and the word you use in here is dehumorize Al Franken. We have to, in our first phase, comment down. And now, and now you're kind of unleashed, and this book is hilarious, and you joke around. You've been reelected. Halliress, the New Yorker.

But it tells me. Can we have? But it tells me that maybe you have, are also, well, more at ease at all this. Of course. I mean, that's part of what the book talks about. As I said, I barely won. You won by 300 votes. I think it's the narrowest.

312. Okay. Please. But maybe the narrowest election in the history? Buy up on a percentage basis. All right. Okay. And that was in a great year.

It was one of the best years Democrats had in, you know, I don't know how long. But your opponent used your comedy against you all the time. And that was the dehumorizer in the book is this. $15 million machine to take out any context or irony or hyperbole or anything to make anything I had said in 38 years of comedy or written horrible. And so once I got to the Senate, I built my own dehumorizer, which was my staff. So they told me I couldn't. they stop me but now you're Al Franken unbound

oh yeah yeah no no it's not unbound I mean we still have I still have the dehumorizer and still operates in our office but it's right out there the whole staff is deputized to operate the dehumorizer any time with me keep that in the car okay that's for the car

I hear that a lot But it's just a different ballgame. When I first got there, I had to prove to Minnesotans that I was serious. But now that you're unleashed, does this mean there's just no chance that you'll ever run for president? Well, I don't think those are connected. I don't think those are connected. I just think that, you know, I think the president of the United States should be somebody who really wants to be president. You don't want to.

I've seen the president's. up closer as a senator than I did as a comedian. And it looks very hard. It looks very difficult and like a lot of pressure. Al Franken of Minnesota, a Giant of the Senate. His new book is called Giant of the Senate. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Good, how you doing?

Good to see you. Everybody okay at home? Morally, I hope so. They were when I left. Emily Flake has been drawing cartoons for the New Yorker. since 2008. She's sharp, she's versatile, she's very funny, and she does politics, pop culture, and parenting equally well. One cartoon has a worried-looking couple reading a letter, and the man says our health insurance is being replaced by a series of tweets calling us losers. In a moment when a lot of

us are feeling pretty anxious about the state of the country, I asked her how she takes her mind off it to get work done. I mean, the things that I've been using to take to make, to make a lot of myself feel happier, besides giant bags of candy. Which candy do you like? Mary Jane's, Bid of Honey's. I like the caramel-y, sticky things. You don't have a filling left in your mouth, do you? No, no.

I just, I got to gum them. It's very, it's really undignified. But these are not your suggestions. These are not my suggestions. What are? So I bought a book on the internet. This is called The Importance of Living by Lin-U-Tang. He is a Chinese fella.

He wrote this in 1330. and it's sort of like a rambling philosophical book about life and how to live it more or less. You know, it's written in the 30s, so it's not not sexist. Where did he live? Who was it? He lived, I want to say he lived in New York. Want me to Wikipedia this real quick? Because I'll totally do that. I think a radio audience would love that.

Yeah. Hold on radio audience while I play around on my phone. I don't know. You guys Google it. But yeah, so he wrote this book that is really, it's, yeah, and it's like scarily prescient. You want to give us an example? Sure. It's Lin-U-Tang's book, and it's called The Importance of Living.

This isn't going to cheer anybody up. This is from a chapter called On Having a Mind. Yeah. So knowing then our human frailties, we have the more reason to hate the despicable wretch, who in demagogue fashion, makes use of our human foibles, hound us into another world war, who inculcates hatred of which we already have too much, who glorifies self-aggrandizement and self-interest of which there is no lack, who appeals to our animal bigotry and racial prejudice, who deletes the Fifth Commandment and the training of youth and encourages killing and war as noble as if we were not already warlike enough creatures, and who

whips up and stirs our mortal passions as if we were not already very near the beast. You were going to make us feel better about current affairs. Would you like some candy? So, Emily, do you have another incredibly uplifting suggestion? I do. When I'm not looking at history to tell me how terrible things are going to be, I crawl down eBay wormholes looking for other historical things I like. I fell in love with this magazine because of a book that I bought at a used bookstore

that was like a compendium of their food writing. Holiday magazine. Yeah. Which was Roger Angel's first job. Yeah, he's got a piece in this. What's it about? It's about shopping in New York. Wow, we can torture him with that.

Let's too, can we? That would be amazing. We absolutely can't. But it's this incredible, it's huge. This is April 1949, a piece about shopping written by Roger Angel, who's still very much on the staff and writes for us about baseball and other things. Amazing. It's a beautiful magazine, too. It looks the way magazines no longer can, let's just put it this way, afford to it.

It's about twice the size of an ordinary magazine. Yeah, and just gorgeous illustration. And the writing strikes this tone sort of between, like, chummy and erudite that is really charming and readable. It's fantastic. And so as a cartoonist, do you, other than the books that you've got and things that you can find on the Internet, are there magazines that you go look at? And other than old New Yorkers, who else did cartooning that you can benefit by? Playboy.

Just read it for the cartoons. There's one, and I don't remember if this was in Playboy, or it might have been in Penn House, some skin mag. And it's two little boys holding a syringe over their sleeping parents, and they're like, won't mom and dad be angry to wake up and find out their heroin addicts? I'm like, this is my favorite cartoon in the whole world. That didn't make it into the New Yorker. Somehow somebody slept on that.

Maybe this week. Yeah. And so your daughter is four? She is. What kind of magazines? What do you want her to be reading when the time comes? National Lampoon, if I can get some of those on eBay. You know, old playboys when the nudes were still tasteful.

I don't know. I hope my daughter, when magazine time comes, like, is able to read magazines and doesn't have to spend all of her time. fighting sentient robots. Emily, thank you so much. Thank you. Cartoonist Emily Flake. I'm David Remnick, and that's it for today. You can stick with the show all week

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