Rep. Alan Grayson, the Florida Democratic congressman who made headlines recently with his provocative partisan comments, told supporters Friday he's being stalked by FOX News. In a fundraising email sent out by his campaign, Grayson said FOX News is ambushing him because he's a "strong voice for justice" but that he won't be taken down by the cable news network's "weapons of mass distraction."
The confrontation that sparked the note involved FOX News correspondent Griff Jenkins, who approached the freshman congressman outside his Capitol Hill office Wednesday and repeatedly asked Grayson what he meant when he called Federal Reserve adviser Linda Robertson a "K Street whore" and whether he would apologize to Vice President Cheney for saying "blood drips from his teeth when he speaks."
Jenkins also asked Grayson for his reaction to New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner's quote in POLITICO referring to the combative congressman "one fry short of a Happy Meal."
Grayson declined to respond to the questions, telling Jenkins several times that he would have to make an appointment with his press secretary, and accused him of "violating the rules."
"Do you know what it means to make an appointment, sir? Do you know what that means?" Grayson asked. "I'm asking you to do what every other reputable news source does, which is to make an appointment... Why don't you make an appointment and follow the rules everyone else follows -- except FOX."
FOX's Bill O'Reilly, host of the top-rated cable news show, aired the footage of Grayson on his program Wednesday evening, and interviewed Jenkins about the incident. Jenkins said Grayson called the police as he waited outside the congressman's office for an interview. "You could hear, audibly standing in the hallways, the congressman at a shouting level saying, 'Why won't these people leave! Why can't you make them go away!' And the police officer saying, 'Sir, they have a right to be there. The hallways are public,'" Jenkins told O'Reilly.
Grayson said the episode was an effort to bully him and used it to criticize the Republican Party, which he ridiculed in September for having health care plans that amounted to a prescription for Americans to "die quickly."
"On Wednesday, Fox News's professional stalker Griff Jenkins stalked me all day, and then ambushed me, just so he could get some footage of me asking him to make an appointment," Grayson wrote to his supporters.
"And sure enough, Bill O'Reilly put that footage on the air, and I was deluged with angry phone calls from Republican voters who think it's my job to be at Fox's beck and call. This is not surprising. The Republican Party is a now a wholly owned subsidiary of Fox News. Well, I won't be taken down by Fox's weapons of mass distraction."
The e-mail also accused FOX of having a "news blackout on everything but fake tea protests and ambushes in the halls of Congress. Enough is Enough."