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 Congressman Tim Burchett (TN-02) to the newsmakers line to discuss the out of control power trip of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, changing mask mandates, and the elusive role of John Kerry.
Leahy: We are delighted to welcome back to our microphones, the voice of sanity (Burchett chuckles) in Washington, D.C., Representative Tim Burchett from Knox County. Welcome back to The Tennessee Star Report Congressman Burchett.
Burchett: Thanks for having me on, brother. I really appreciate it.
Leahy: I don’t know how you guys do it up there right now with Nancy Pelosi running the House of Representatives like it’s her own little dictatorial club. How do you stand it?
Burchett: You pray a lot, honestly. There is no rhyme or reason and even our own party or parties and shambles. They’re on us about an election for the person who literally just schedules our meetings and at the end of the Republican Party. But dadgum, look at them.
We can’t even have a meeting during the day on a Zoom call because she scheduled three at the exact same time and we don’t have the bandwidth to do it. They are always collapsing. We were on with Secretary Buttigieg a few weeks back and I asked the chair lady, why does he keep freezing?
Why can’t we have this testimony? And she said, well, there are three other meetings going on at the same time. And that is just a small sample of a bigger problem. I think she and the President, their day is come and gone and the country is not being well served by them and all the radical agenda.
Gas lines, who would have thought we had gas lines in 2021? Inflation is rising, of course, at an alarming rate. The border is overflowing. There’s trouble in the Middle East. And all they’re concerned about is making sure that the media over there is taken care of.
And the media should know better and put their headquarters where Hamas headquarters are or where there are missiles being launched. And it’s just beyond belief. I think our priorities are completely out of whack with this bunch. We’re spending a one trillion-dollar infrastructure bill.
Then it went to a one-point three then two. Now it’s a three. And five percent of it, I think, goes to roads and bridges, traditional infrastructure. The rest is Green New Deal and virtue signaling. The midterm elections could not get here soon enough.
Leahy: I’m with you on that. How different is it under the Pelosi speakership now than it was previously when they actually had somewhat normal operations?
Burchett: This year, it’s just kind of gone. I’ve always been under her reign of terror so to speak (Leahy laughs) when I came in. But just in the last year, under COVID, she’s lost any resemblance of leadership. Then there is the mask mandate.
Everybody’s saying, well, take the mask off. And now I read early this morning that the reverse in that they’re saying, well, maybe we went too fast on that. She’s allowed unelected bureaucrats to dictate to us American citizens what we can and cannot do and to me, that’s that is wrong.
And she is wrong as she could be. I know there’s plenty of edited versions of her speaking but just go watch some of the unedited versions. It’s just unbelievable. It’s unbearable really is what it is.
Leahy: Yeah, that’s a good term. Unbearable.
Burchett: The Democrats know it. If you talk to any of them off the record, the vast majority of them, they’re just waiting their turn. It’s all they’re doing right now.
Leahy: Now you talked about the mask mandate. This is so very confusing. The confusion starts with the CDC, but also, I don’t know if you call it confusion more dictatorial anti-science policy in the House of Representatives itself.
I saw last week the CDC said you don’t need to wear masks if you’ve been vaccinated. Then on Saturday, they said, oh, but yes, school kids have to wear masks or they recommend you should. Now Nancy Pelosi there was a little bit of a brouhaha about this. One of your colleagues, I think it was Brian Mast from Florida who appeared on the House floor.
And even after the CDC said, you don’t have to wear a mask if you’ve been vaccinated, she set the little dictatorial rule that you’ve got to wear a mask on the floor. So Brian Mast from Florida went into the House and dramatically ripped his mask off.
When last I saw this, she said, you’re going to be fined $500. a day. And then thereafter $1,000. a day. Where does maskgate stand now in the House of Representatives?
Burchett: I’m sure she’ll make us wear it until the end of the year or something. It’s just more of her just showing her power. And it’s ridiculous because if you look on the floor and if the media would ever show it, the Democrats are always huddled over there and a very un-social distancing manner.
And they come over there and tell us to separate. We got to wear our masks. The Sergeant at Arms is threatening to fine us. And it’s just like the metal detectors, which is another ridiculous rule that she’s done. She waves it for herself.
She walks right through it. Don’t forget, she brought somebody there that was COVID positive to vote for her because it was a very close vote on the House floor.
Leahy: I remember that.
Burchett: The national media sort of forgot that. I mean, it was just a bogus deal all the way around. It’s just a power kick for them. And we all know it and it’s ridiculous, but we got to live under it because she is the Speaker.
Leahy: The Speaker does get to set the rules of behavior in the House of Representatives. But if the Speaker said, everybody has to hop on one foot before they speak, would that be a legitimate rule?
Burchett: I would say about half the people in there would start hopping on one foot. (Leahy laughs) The Republican Party would not because there are some others that think that she’s just the greatest thing in the world.
You know, something else I don’t get is how can a Catholic be just wide open on pro-choice? And if a baby is born alive, if a doctor is allowed to kill that baby, how can she get by with that? I question that. That makes me very angry. Her agenda is clearly for her and not for anybody else and not for the wellbeing of the country.
Leahy: Congressman Burchett, why do the Democrats go in lockstep along with this sort of dictatorial approach of Nancy Pelosi? Why is no one there of independent mind or courage or spirit on the Democratic side?
Burchett: I would say the Democrats use the carrot of the stick pretty much. If you act up, they give you the stick. If you don’t, they give you a carrot. Jim Cooper, your representative from right there voted against Pelosi a couple of times, and I guess he ended up in the closet for an office. But they punish pretty well.
They do a pretty good job of that. And we don’t. I don’t know that we should, but they sure do. They sure do punish their people. They get out of line like the girl with the throuple or whatever her name was in California, she was a wild card. And then, surprisingly, if something got leaked to the press.
Leahy: Surprisingly. (Laughs)
Burchett: I doubt that that was any Republicans that leaked it. But they just figured she was too much of a wild card and they took care of her. If I was a Democrat, I would fear other Democrats before I would fear Republicans because they’re a pretty vicious bunch. Everybody down there is trying to get to that Speaker’s office somehow. Everybody thinks that they got a shot at it.
Leahy: They want to be the Speaker. They want the power.
Burchett: I just want to make sure I get home to my wife and daughter.
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 “Tim Burchett” by Congressman Tim Burchett.
