Mayor Andy Ogles and Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee’s Grant Henry Discuss the Cuban Protests and the Fight for Freedom

Mayor Andy Ogles and Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee’s Grant Henry Discuss the Cuban Protests and the Fight for Freedom

 

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 Grassroots Engagement Director of Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee Grant Henry and Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in studio to review false narratives regarding the Cuban protests and questioned whether Americans value their freedom as many were seen marching with American flags.

(Antony Blinken clip plays)

It shows that they simply are not hearing the voices and will of the Cuban people: People deeply, deeply, deeply tired of the repression that has gone on for far too long, tired of the mismanagement.

Leahy: That’s the current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the poster child for the beta-male of American foreign policy under the maladministration of Joe Biden, formerly with that esteemed law firm Winken, Blinken, and Nod. Obviously, the guy is not ready for primetime. All these things going on in Cuba and all you hear from Biden and Blinken is, don’t do that.

Don’t do that. Marco Rubio, the Senator from Florida, hitting back a lot harder. I don’t know why it’s so hard for the Biden administration to criticize Marxism.

Grant Henry and Andy Ogles in here. Grant, with Americans for Prosperity of Tennessee and Andy, mayor of Maury County. Here’s the story, Grant. I want to get you reacting to this report. Communists beat a dissident Cuban priest, drag him through the streets.

A Cuban priest reportedly remains in police custody as of Monday after police beat him, dragged him through the streets, and stripped him in his native Camagüey, Cuba for supporting peaceful protests. What do you make of this, Grant?

Henry: Here’s my statement. I actually wrote it last night. May God bless the brave Cuban freedom demonstrators standing up to their totalitarian Communist government.

It’s quite telling, actually, to watch Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the hard left who normally comment on everything, who say nothing now.

And it’s ridiculous to see mainstream medicine shortages and high prices. Note, the American flags, the anti-Communist, pro-freedom signs at the protest.

This is the grassroots uprising by courageous people who are risking prison, beatings, and even death in the hope of freedom.

I say, “what an inspiring sight.” And that’s a quote I got from a great man who shall not be named Michael. But I think it’s quite fitting for right now.

Leahy: (Laughs) Andy Ogles, mayor of Maury County. Bernie Sanders, a great proponent of communism and socialism – the guy that spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union.

That gives you the idea of what kind of guy this was. He’s praised the Castro regime in the past. Where is he on all of this?

Ogles: I think when you look at the current education system in the United States and why critical race theory in this new agenda of propaganda that’s crept into our schools is such a problem because by rewriting history, we don’t learn from history.

And so you look at when the Bolsheviks, and the revolution that took place between 1917 and 1923, were revolting against the oligarchy.

And then the moment they seized power, they destroyed everything that they talked about. You fast forward to 1934, the three-day purge, the Night of the Long Knives, and when fascism swept Germany. We know how this story ends. It’s like the Bible. I read the end. I know the outcome. And you look at Russia, you look at Germany, you look at Venezuela, and you look at Cuba.

Marxism, socialism, and Faucism, whatever you want to call it, does not end well for freedom. And we’ve got to stand up to these governors that are more interested in photo ops. And they are a substantive change and fighting and are destroying our country by their complacency.

Leahy: There’s a story at Breitbart by my colleague Alana Mastrangelo. Over the years, there’s been no shortage of woke left-wing celebrities like Steven Spielberg, Jay Z, Beyoncé, and Katy Perry, who have vacationed in Communist Cuba normalizing and spending their money in a country with a government that controls the flow of money as well as brutalizes and murders its own people.

Grant Henry, with Americans for Prosperity of Tennessee, what’s your reaction to that?

Henry: Look, I think we’re in a time of the Orwellian sort of foreshadowing of prediction that the heresy of heresies is common sense.

Do you know what I’m saying? We’re now in the time where even to question something in the realm of common sense is a heresy.

And I think that’s part of the allure. Conservatives would do ourselves justice to admit the fact that communism on paper is a presentation of a utopia.

That’s what we’re fighting against. What we’re fighting against is the lie of a utopia that will never really come to be. But I promise you all, I promise you, one of the reasons why I really love working for Americans for Prosperity – because our pitch is this:

Look, you are not a perpetual victim. You are not some liability that needs to be taken care of. You do not have to constantly and continually subsist upon the handouts of the government.

You can do it yourself. You are empowered. You are strong. You can start that small business. I personally believe the creator of the universe has chosen you specifically for this time here now to have a talent that only you can do. If you plug that in properly, incredible things can happen.

Leahy: Andy Ogles, a little touch of irony here. Do you want to jump in here?

Ogles: I just want to say, “Amen, man.”

Leahy: Amen, brother. Preach it! Preach it, Grant Henry! Are you sure you’re a political guy?

Henry: What he’s calling me to.

Leahy: A little touch of irony here, Andy. Again, another story by Alana Mastrangelo, my colleague. She’s great, by the way, at Breitbart.

Twitter, I start off Twitter commenting on what’s going on in Cuba, already I’m laughing. Twitter describes the Cuban anticommunist hashtag as people, “helping to spread awareness of coronavirus.”

While thousands of Cubans were taking to the streets on Sunday to demand an end to the 62-year-old Communist regime and the #SOSCuba was trending, Twitter falsely described the hashtag as “people are helping spread awareness on the impact of COVID-19 in Cuba as cases hit an all-time high in the country.”

Ogles: I remember back in the day reading Huxley’s A Brave New World or Orwells 1984. And it was like, this is science fiction, right?

This is a parallel universe that could never come to pass. Then here we are in this era of COVID and we’re romanticizing Cuba?

Have you not been paying attention since the 1950s? That place has gone from a robust economy to devastation. And you’re going to blame America?

And it should be noted that the people that are in the streets crying for freedom, they’re waving American flags.

Leahy: Here’s another story from Breitbart. They were on a roll last night by my colleague Wendell Husebo. Grant, I want to get your reaction to this.  Joe Biden’s Cuba statement doesn’t mention beatings, shootings of protesters.

President Joe Biden issued a statement on Monday claiming to, “Stand with the Cuban people” against their repressive Communist regime, but failing to mention widespread reports of public gang beatings and live fire against unarmed protesters on the part of state security.

Henry: This is the Communist playbook, too. And not just what you mentioned. In the Communist playbook, you can see actually tracking data where the state government has completely cut off phone lines and Internet lines as well. And from something that Mayor Ogles just mentioned here a second ago – that they’re waving American flags.

Not just in Cuba, but they did the same thing in Hong Kong. It gets me at my core. It’s a guttural reaction that I think sometimes are we worthy of that.

Honestly, has anyone listened to this programmer of Americans, step back and really ask yourself, are we truly worthy of other people fighting for freedom in the name of our flag?

Do we honestly believe in freedom that much? That’s a thing that will get you to your core if you really think about it enough.

Ogles: And part of this, too, is again, going back to Critical Race Theory. This is a big deal. It’s destroyed our country as part of that supplemental material here in the state of Tennessee.

In Tennessee is George versus George,  George Washington versus King George. And the villain in the book is George Washington.

Leahy: This is a curriculum endorsed by Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn, the UC Berkeley graduate with very little classroom teaching experience appointed by Governor Bill Lee.

Ogles: So we’re teaching children in America in the state of Tennessee, in Williamson County and in Middle Tennessee, to hate America.

Leahy: Well, I think a lot of the kids that graduated from those kinds of schools go on to report for The New York Times. Here’s another story at Breitbart.

They were on a roll last night. The New York Times on Cuba protests. Freedom is an anti-government slogan. The New York Times described the chance of freedom as thousands of strong, peaceful protests in Cuba on Sunday as one of several ‘anti-government slogans popular among the congregated.’

The Times also erroneously reported the protests were about ‘food and medicine shortages.’ Grant, what do you think?

Henry: Again, that type of narrative is either purposely misleading, purposefully misleading at best, or malicious at worst. You get what I’m saying.

Leahy: Andy Ogles, here’s another one. In Cuba, police leave an AP photographer bloody after a public beating. Cuban authorities have cracked down on the international free press and mass demonstrations against the Communist regime, with police assaulting reporters and photojournalists in the crowd. Your reaction.

Ogles: You look at the state of our country and you look at people not wanting to respect the flag or to stand for the anthem and meanwhile, in Cuba, Venezuela, Hong Kong, China, and other parts of the world, they waive the flag because it means something.

It means hope. It means the opportunity. You have the right to disagree and not to be persecuted for it. And that’s the problem with the left, this double standard.

We are a Republic of free States. I’ve said this many times, I support California’s right to be liberal, to be socialist leaning. But at the same token, if you’re in Tennessee or South Dakota or South Carolina or Florida or Texas, you have the right to be conservative.

But they will persecute you, and they will censor you. They will try to silence you because that’s not how they view the world, nor do they value the Constitution.

Leahy: We’ll be back with more later. By the way, these Cuban protests, there are thousands in at least 16 cities who took part in these peaceful protests on Sunday.

So there is a movement going on in Cuba for freedom! Not a bad word. Freedom. That’s what we support here.

Listen to the full third hour 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.
Photo “Cuban Protesters” by BBC. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan Gainor VP of MRC TechWatch Explains the Left’s ‘Freedom of Speech Does Not Equal Freedom of Reach’

Dan Gainor VP of MRC TechWatch Explains the Left’s ‘Freedom of Speech Does Not Equal Freedom of Reach’

 

Live from Music Row Monday 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 VP of MRC Tech Watch, Culture, and Business Dan Gainor to the newsmakers line.

During the first hour, Gainor made the case for liberty explaining how the MSM and Big Tech are controlling speech, de-platforming, and censoring the content of right-wing media outlets. He recognized the control as an attempt to have America online mimic that of Europe online by systematically removing our Bill of Rights. Gainor outlined how the left games the system as citizens have moved most of their life online.

Leahy: We are joined Now by our good friend of many years Dan Gainor Vice President of Business and Culture for the Media Research Center. He also has a section there called Tech Watch. Welcome, Dan.

Gainor: It’s good to be talking to you. It’s been a while.

Leahy: Dan, we first met back in the Tea Party days.

Gainor: Yes. I was just going to say that. And we go way way back. And in today’s environment that’s like, you know dog years and we’re like both a hundred or something.

Leahy: Well, we first started corresponding in 2009 at the start of the Tea Party Movement. We met in person and talked about Tea Party strategy and related things at a restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia back in 2010. And we’ve been friends ever since. Big question Dan. How has the case of liberty proceeded in America in the intervening 11 years since we first met in person?

Gainor: Oh, it’s like a snowball rolling downhill and it’s heading toward a cliff. I mean, it’s in bad shape. When you have major media outlets calling to de-platform major media outlets. When you have Big Tech basically controlling what you can see say or do online, that is not the path for freedom. That’s not the path for liberty.

Look, we just finished it seems like forever ago already, but we just finished an election where Big Tech, Facebook, and Twitter fixed the election by censoring content. In Facebook‘s case, it openly violated its own policies to the point where its bogus fact-checkers threw them under the bus and said that they weren’t even obeying their bogus fact-check rules.

So then you get to this point now where CNN is blatantly calling to de-platform and for people that don’t know, what that means basically remove from any platform that’s available on. So if you want to remove OANN, Newsmax, Fox, and Fox Business, that means sure they can broadcast but nobody can see them. So if you’ve got Verizon or you have Comcast they’d be kicked off. If they broadcast online on Facebook or YouTube they’d be kicked off. That’s what the media team at CNN is trying to do.

Leahy: Well what kind of opportunity do we have the push back here Dan?

Gainor: To me first, people need to not buckle under to this stuff. And that means there are ways on their sites too, first of all, complain and to file and to reject it. And if you’ve got stuff suspended or whatever there are ways to appeal that. You do that. That’s just a bureaucratic thing you do it. Because know a lot of people don’t even bother but sometimes you win.

So there’s that’s the first thing. Next, Facebook has just announced this oversight board, so if you get content taken down, you could appeal to that. It’s just one more way of putting pressure. Then ultimately this is going to be something that gets decided I think on either Capitol Hill or in the courts or both because these companies are still American companies and they’ve decided that we don’t have the same rights we have offline as online. And they’re trying to make it worse. There is a strong push by these companies to make America online be more in line with Europe online. Well, the last time I checked we still have this Bill of Rights thing.

Leahy: It’s a good way for them to get rid of the Bill of Rights.

Gainor: Well it effectively does when you look at how much we live our lives online now. And more so obviously because of the COVID. I just heard the newscast coming on that kids are still going to school at home. You’ve got people working from home. You’ve got people interacting with the government expressing their opinion. And if you can’t express your opinion online then you don’t have free speech. If you can’t worship online then you don’t have freedom of religion.

Leahy: And by the way, you mentioned this Facebook Ombudsman appeal court, I guess you could say of review. And I looked at the members of it and  I did not see a single conservative news journalist.

Gainor: There is actually one.

Leahy: Who is that? Who is that? Who is that one? Is it Mike McConnell?

Gainor: He releases the social con of some things. But then you’ve got a Libertarian guy who isn’t especially conservative on a lot of things. So they almost cancel out. This is how the left games the system. They say they create a free-speech board. They have 20 members of the board, 15 of them are international.

Leahy: Exactly. That caught my attention too Dan. That caught my attention.

Gainor: So they don’t have any similar view of the U.S. for free speech.

Leahy: Did they call you to be on the board, Dan?

Gainor: No.

Leahy: They didn’t call me either. I’m shocked! I’m shocked!

Gainor: And so I mean they’ve already gamed the system. And here’s the funny thing. To show you how radical the left is the left hates the oversight board because it’s not left-wing enough. Because it’s not censoring content. They hated the rulings that they have already done because they didn’t want to censor content.

The left has this new line and if used for a while I but when you see it crop up on CNN, you know, it’s breaking through. And that’s freedom of speech does not equal freedom of reach. So in other words, you have a right to stand on your soapbox and say something but not in the public square. You can say it on your property. You can say it at your house.

Leahy: Where your nearby neighbors can hear it, but nobody else.

Gainor: Right, and maybe not even that. How dare you say that! A lot of this comes from the radical left on all sorts of issues particularly the transgender issue. If you say men aren’t women on Twitter you can be suspended.

Leahy: They are crazy!

Gainor: It doesn’t matter. They control the platforms.

Leahy: So do you have a particular plan to be on this Dan? I have some thoughts but do what do you think the pushback should entail and what are the chances of success?

Gainor: Well ultimately I think this is the Civil rights battle of this century. And I say civil rights battle because when there is an organized effort to target a group of people, doesn’t matter who the group of people is when there’s an organized effort to target a group of people for the way they think and to silence them, to shut them down, to cost them their jobs, to target their faith, etc, historically that’s seen in this country as a civil rights issue.

And I know that’s hard for conservatives to think of that we’re a minority that’s being targeted. but we are. And so ultimately I think that’s the battle to fight all the way up through the Supreme Court. and that takes a while. So I think that’s part of it. I think this is an international battle. We’ve headed up the Free Speech Alliance which is a coalition of 76 different organizations that are conservative around the world now.

We’ve added I think half a dozen members in Europe, South America, and Australia and we’re continuing to expand because we are fighting globalist international corporations of the most powerful corporations in human history. I always tell people that India was conquered by the British East India Company. And the British East India Company isn’t as powerful as Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon.

Leahy: Dan here’s a question for you. We are on a talk radio station right now here in Nashville, Tennessee. How long will talk radio allow freedom of speech or is it likely to continue in your view?

Gainor: Well, I mean, I think the left has wanted to go after talk radio for a long time. It’s just not their number one target. Right now their number one target is Facebook. They want to knock us off there. I mean they’re going after Fox because I think I think they think Fox is weak right now post-election. So they’re trying to bully as much as they can. And you always heard of the bully pulpit. They’re using the bully pulpit.

If they can silence people into being afraid to speak out then they win half the battle that way. They don’t even have to change things. But the Democrats are definitely in charge of Washington and not respective of the First Amendment. They don’t believe in it. They don’t believe in free speech. If you look at HR1 which they passed in the House under Trump that they wanted to get rid of Citizens United.

Citizens United is a free-speech ruling. They don’t believe in it. It was all about creating a documentary about Hillary Clinton when she ran for president. And they oppose that even though they control Hollywood and they produce documentaries all the time bashing the right.

Listen to the full first hour 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.
Photo “Dan Gainor” by MRC.