Live from Music Row Thursday 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 recovering journalist Clint Brewer in studio for another edition of Clint Brewer’s Winners and Losers of the Week.
Leahy: Clint, who are your winners of this week? Who’s your winner of the week?
Brewer: I think I’ve got two winners—one national, one local. Nationally, I’d say Representative James Comer for what we’ll call the Comer Report. The 36-page document detailing the Biden family connections to, I think it was 21 different companies.
Leahy: Money from China, money from Romania that went to 20-some-odd different LLCs. And then went to member nine members of the Biden family including Hunter Biden the widow of Bo Biden, and Hunter Biden’s ex-wife.
Brewer: There were grandchildren of Joe Biden in there. All while he was vice president.
Leahy: That’s what you might call a bit of a smoking gun to me.
Brewer: Yes. That’s a big story. A big get for the House Republicans. So Comer is the first one. I would say second based on The Tennessee Star’s litigation.
The second winner is local journalism in Nashville. I think that those lawsuits are significant. It is a little disappointing that the rest of the media in the city is not covering the fact that there are lawsuits from The Tennessee Star.
Leahy: That is interesting because I do know that there, there are other media outlets that thought about filing lawsuits. But Phil Williams and News Channel Five, they’ve not filed lawsuits.
Brewer: I think that’s good. Losers, and I hate to pick on him again, but I’m gonna have to go with Governor DeSantis from Florida. The coverage this week of Wall Street donors walking away from his bid for the presidency, which he’s unannounced but pretty evident. Governor DeSantis is going to have to pick it up.
Leahy: And the problem is, what you see here is, put this in context of last night, Trump was in a CNN Town Hall and literally, just mopped the floor with Kaitlan Collins.
Brewer: He’s still doing some of the things that may keep him from being a winner in a general election. And that’s the thing. Republicans want a winner, right?
Leahy: They want a winner.
Brewer: And so I think a lot of people want DeSantis to be the guy, but he’s just not showing any signs of life.
Leahy: There was a Morning Consult poll that showed Trump with a 41-point lead over DeSantis. It was like 60 to 19.
Brewer: It’s still 2023. If he announces and in the fourth quarter you see him cut that lead by 20 points, Wall Street will come back. But they’re still looking for the person, and they haven’t found him yet.
Leahy: Same poll. Not my words. Morning Consult poll, Ramaswamy, rising. Vivek. Our buddy Vivek at five percent tied in third place.
Brewer: Buying market share. Like a good capitalist buy and market share.
Leahy: When he comes to town, we’ll try to have him in studio and I’m going to try to have him in the studio the same day you’re here.
Brewer: Oh, I’m gonna have to actually dress up a little bit.
Leahy: Compared to me, I can’t wear shorts. You look very stylish this morning Clint. So I think that’s a very good description of winners and losers. And I think the big winner is James Comer. They have bank documents.
Brewer: The House in general, they came out of the speaker’s race looking like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. And now they’ve passed this, for whatever people think of it, a deficit reduction thing.
Leahy: We’ll increase the debt limit if you reduce the rate of spending. It’s very modest.
Brewer: And it’s a little bit of an old saw. How many times has the House done this? But all that’s old is new again. They brushed off the bell bottoms and put them back on and they’re fashionable again. They’re not crazy. They’re functioning.
Leahy: And the one who looks like he’s not functioning is Joe Biden because he’s saying I’m not going to negotiate with you, but he can’t do anything right now. He doesn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate. He needs to come up with an alternative. He’s got to cut a deal and he just doesn’t seem capable of, let’s say, advanced thought.
Brewer: Yes. I’d heard this clip on the way in, on another show, and it was him at a public event this week trying to pronounce the names of famous Asian Americans.
Leahy: I heard the same clip. It was a wandering episode in, where am I?
Brewer: I don’t know how the communications staff at the White House isn’t being run out of the building. (Leahy laughs) Who does that? Knowing his tendencies, who lets him out there to do that?
Leahy: He had a one-on-one to do that interview Friday night with Stephanie Ruhle at MSNBC, and it was equally bad. He’s not there. Now you see, here’s the problem. I think the worst job in Washington right now would be on the communication staff of Joe Biden.
Brewer: Oh yeah.
Leahy: Don’t you think?
Brewer: The absolute worst, although there don’t seem to be any repercussions for poor performance? I think it’s back to the basement, man. I think it’s back to the basement. (Leahy laughs) He’s the leader of the free world, but we’ve got a basement at the White House.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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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 “James Comer” by James Comer.
