Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Senior Editor-At-Large at The Epoch Times Roger Simon to the studio to discuss his recent article suggesting Donald Trump 2.0 become the education president and questioned whether or not Tennessee will stop the federal bribe money encouraging critical race theory in the K-12 public schools.
Leahy: We are joined in studio by the newest all-star panelist for The Tenessee Star Report, my former boss at PJTV, and also an editor at large for The Epoch Times, the fastest-growing newspaper and website in America, Roger Simon. Roger, we’re talking about education. Our lead story at The Tennessee Star. Williamson County School System Officials Deny They Are Pushing Critical Race Theory, Critics Call it Marxist. You have a terrific column at The Epoch Times. You suggest that Donald Trump 2 0 should be the education president.
Simon: Yes. Principally to fight this stuff, to get rid of it, because it’s almost a cancer on our country. I mean, I hate to be so grim because when I come here in the morning…
Leahy: Yeah, but, Roger, you’re being honest.
Simon: I’m being honest and truth of the matter, as Michael and I have discussed here in the morning and drive time, we should be a little bit upbeat.
Leahy: We should be. We try to be, but we have to be honest.
Simon: Exactly. And this is a red line for anybody. Because imagine trying to teach a six-year-old the most important thing about his or her life is skin color.
Leahy: It’s crazy.
Simon: That’s what critical race theory is all about. It’s about the subversion of the United States because it’s a replacement for the old Marxist line of class struggle. It didn’t work. So some eggheads in Europe decided oh, well, let’s make it about race now which is actually, in my view, worse.
Leahy: It’s all about race from the Democrats. It looks like the Democrats at every level, with help from mainstream media and Big Tech, are trying to create a race war in America. That’s what it looks like to me.
Simon: Well, they’re doing it. They’re not trying and in part succeeding. The fact that critical race theory is now and, you know, it’s in our schools and it’s in our schools because the Department of Education puts funding on it. Hello, Governor Lee. Don’t take their money. This is a bribe. The states are being bribed to teach this stuff. It’s a pretty scary thing.
That’s why I’m recommending in the article that if there’s a Trump 2.0 or a DeSantis 1.0, that the first thing they do is change the Department of Education, which maybe should be obliterated altogether. But you’ve got to make a transition and take someone like the great Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College and come in there and right the ship. Then you can destroy.
Leahy: Great minds think alike, Roger, because tomorrow morning at six o’clock on this very program, Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, will be our guest to talk about these things.
Simon: Well, I’ll have to get up early. I know Larry pretty well, but I have to get up early to listen to that one because he’s a great person. When you talk about a great American, he’s a great American.
Leahy: So you were talking about the nefarious Department of Education becoming even more nefarious under the Biden-Harris maladministration. There is a regulation now being considered by the Department of Education, and they’re promulgating it. Meaning they’re getting comments on it before they finalize it. And they’re jamming this thing down. What they’re doing is they are going to make available to teachers around the country grants to teach critical race theory and be the false tenants of the discredited 1619 Project from The New York Times.
Simon: Yep.
Leahy: Money is coming to Tennessee teachers. Now, having said that, your point is…
Simon: Don’t take it.
Leahy: Governor Lee should lead the way.
Simon: He’s the one who has to do it. I know he’s probably suffering somewhere with DeSantis envy. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: Hold on, DeSantis envy? Did you just coin that phrase right now?
Simon: Just this second yes.
Leahy: I love that phrase. And apparently every Republican potential national figure apparently now has DeSantis envy.
Simon: Well, they should. He’s shown himself to be the guy, but it’s not so hard to do what he’s doing. And all you have to have is little guts. And just remember the famous phrase of H.L. Mencken the journalist from Baltimore years ago. “When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.” And that’s what’s going on here, as you just said. They’re presenting the states with bribes, essentially, to teach this pollution.
Leahy: And directly the money under this regulation, which I expect will be approved. They’re just going through the motions on these commentaries.
Simon: They put up a phony thing like that, and then they do it.
Leahy: So my guess is within the next 60 days, the Department of Education will announce the availability of grants to teach critical race theory and the 1619 Project. The premise of the 1619 Project, discredited, by the way, by all real historians, is that America was based upon slavery from the very beginning.
Simon: It was even walked back eventually by The New York Times, where it was first published. And The New York Times doesn’t walk back much of this stuff anyway.
Leahy: So what’s going to happen is we’re at the end of April, probably in July of this year the Department of Education will send out a missive to every public school district in America, including 145 of them here in Tennessee. And every teacher of government, history, and civics, and even math and other areas will be allowed to apply for grants that will enable them to have materials to teach critical race theory. And the 1619 Project. What is the state of Tennessee doing right now to stop that, Roger?
Simon: Well, we don’t know. I mean, it’s sitting in the lap of the governor, and I think and of course, the legislature. I think every single one and we have to watch everybody because everybody depends on this. If this stuff goes through across the country and in Tennessee is the last place that it goes through. The electorate here in Tennessee is more to the right than it is in Florida and yet and DeSantis has already put a blockade against this.
Leahy: Yes, he has.
Simon: He made a statement.
Leahy: We are not teaching critical race theory in Florida’s K-12 public schools.
Simon: A high percentage of the people are listening to this now like a parent and or grandparents or whatever. And everybody has a stake in this. This is not minor. This is not one of those things where you shrug it off and they say oh global warming, they’re making me buy an electric car. Well, this is the brain.
Leahy: Our reporter who’s covered this, Chris Butler, has put numerous requests for comment about the actions Governor Lee will take to stop the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 public schools in Tennessee. And the only line that I’ve stolen from a good friend, Howie Carr, in Boston, the Boston radio talk show king. When the phone didn’t ring, we knew it was Governor Bill Lee. (Laughter)
Simon: Well, that’s a pretty tough line. But, you know, he has an opportunity to show that, I mean, look, it’s going to be remembered. This is something that is not going to be forgotten because it’s going to be in the schools come the next primary.
Leahy: We’ve talked to several state legislators, and they are putting something together. I don’t know if they will have it together in a timely manner before the Tennesse General Assembly adjourns this session. Probably by next Friday.
Simon: Ding, ding, ding. This is an emergency more than most things.
Leahy: I think every listener to this program, Roger, would agree with you that stopping the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 public schools right now in Tennessee is an emergency. And we’ll see if the governor and the legislature are up to the task on that one.
Listen to the full broadcast here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
