State Senator Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) joined Tuesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to discuss Governor Bill Lee’s State of the State Address delivered the prior night.
Throughout Lee’s address to state lawmakers and Tennesseans, he was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers, who first became vocal as the governor announced his plans to expand school choice and public education funding in the Volunteer State.
Roberts said he thought the governor did a good job handling the heckling throughout his speech.
“I thought the governor, given all the people who kept trying to disrupt, interrupt, cough – the coughing was just amazing, it was like these people were up in the gallery doing fake coughing. And for him to be able to concentrate and deliver his speech you know, kept his cool, didn’t act annoyed. I was ready to stand up and yell at somebody. I mean, it was so rude. It was so immature,” Roberts said. “For him to not lose his place or lose his cool was pretty remarkable.”
“And you know what? Here’s the thing – the people were there because a legislator gave them a ticket to be there. And so that means that those people were probably basically recruited by a Democrat to come and heckle the governor,” Roberts added.
Roberts continued by saying a Democrat colleague of his has said Democrat state lawmakers are “just frustrated that their voices are not being heard,” however, he argued that there is a “difference between not being heard and not being agreed with.”
“Tennessee is 75 percent conservative. I’m not going to move to California or New York or Colorado and go march against leftist policies because that’s what that state has decided they wanted. So for people to move here because they like our economy, but then want to advocate for all these leftist principles. It’s just, like, no, no, don’t get upset and don’t say, “well, our voices aren’t being heard.” No, your voices are being heard. We just flat out refute it. We disagree with it,” Roberts explained. “We’re not Marxists, we’re not socialists, we’re not communists, and we’re not going to be. And so, you know, it’s not that their voices aren’t being heard, it’s that their voices are being rejected.”
“But in the world where everybody gets a trophy, they don’t get that,” Roberts added. “They don’t understand that. They think they ought to be able to stand up and talk back and wheeze during the State of the State Address, and then somehow that changes policy. I don’t get it. It’s ridiculous.”
Roberts said the “punk behavior” in the House began within the last couple of years.
“The socialist, Marxist, leftists that have managed to get elected to the Tennessee House, they know they can’t pass anything that’s important to them,” Roberts said. “So their role is to be disruptive and they give it clever sounding names like “good trouble,” and it’s just punk behavior.”
“It’s performative politics. It’s theatric, Kabuki theater. Total theatrical. That’s exactly what it is,” Roberts added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Bill Lee” by Bill Lee.
