Live from Music Row, Wednesday 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 One America News political correspondent Neil W McCabe to the newsmaker line to breakdown the 2024 Republican presidential candidates.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line, top gov tracker, our very good friend Neil W. McCabe, with One America News Network. Good morning, Neil.
McCabe: Michael, Crom, very good to be with you, man.
Leahy: So Neil, Saturday morning former President Trump puts out this tweet: I expect to be arrested by the left-wing district attorney in Manhattan on Tuesday on these trumped-up charges. Almost immediately, our buddy, Vivek Ramaswamy put out a tweet calling on the DA in New York to not make these charges because they were in fact, trumped up.
The Trump campaign made this a litmus test for the other candidates. Some of them ultimately came in and backed him but others didn’t. And your buddy Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida had a, oh, I don’t know, a weak defense of Trump, wouldn’t you say?
McCabe: (Chuckles) He checked the box.
Leahy: He checked the box. But what he didn’t say was that Donald Trump was unhappy with that response. And then he had this social media posting on Truth Social late Monday night where he said DeSantis is struggling. He’s probably gonna be behind young Vivek Ramaswamy in the polls when they come up. What do you make of that?
McCabe: Michael, we learned when we were doing the Breitbart polls together in 2016, and this is from the words of Pat Caddell, Trump wins on the issues, Trump does not win on personality. And Pat, I don’t know if he had this rant with you, but he had a rant one night and basically told me, I’m going to Trump Tower to meet with Bannon and tell Bannon that if Trump keeps making it a personality contest between him and Hillary, he will lose.
He needs to talk about Syrian refugees. He needs to talk about building a wall. He needs to talk about defending gun rights. And I think this is the problem with Trump because more than any other politician around today, it’s personality and issues. And there are a lot of politicians who have no personality, but they’re all issues. And there are some guys who are all personality.
But with Trump, it’s this constant battle. And I think the real sort of subtext of what’s happened in the last month with Trump versus DeSantis is that for the first time, DeSantis is reacting to Trump, not the other way around. I think the DeSantis people have had to move up their timetable to respond to this thing in Manhattan.
And you also saw DeSantis, a week or so ago basically responding to Trump’s criticism where he never really did it before. He basically ignored him. And Monday he had a thing in Panama City and the DeSantis people were calling around telling people, hey you might want to cover this thing in Panama City because there’ll be some availability for questions.
I think that the DeSantis people were shocked that it turned so badly against them. What regular Republicans want is, they just want everybody to rally around a Republican who’s getting sniped at.
The last thing I’ll say about this, Mike I guess on this rant though, is that in the midterms for 2022, we saw the breakup of the marriage inside the Republican Party between the staffers, the consultants, the leaders, and the conservatives because you had the staffers, the consultants, and the leadership working against conservatives who were the nominees. And on Wednesday morning, they were ecstatic.
They were cheering that so many conservatives and MAGA candidates lost and for good or for bad, right? If you have a party, everybody has a primary, and then everyone supports the nominee. If people in your party are actively working against your nominee, that is not a party anymore.
Leahy: You’re down there in Tallahassee?
McCabe: Yes.
Leahy: You’ve been down there for several months, and I think you’re still working on that exclusive interview with Ron DeSantis. I see that your buddy Piers Morgan…
McCabe: Wait a minute. I spoke to him. I spoke to him for eight minutes about Hurricane Ian. So there you go.
Leahy: You got the eight minutes. Your buddy Piers Morgan went down and spent an hour with him in the mansion there and had an interview that’s gonna air on Fox Nation Thursday. DeSantis is trying to distinguish himself from Trump and criticized Trump’s style. Is that a winning approach for DeSantis?
McCabe: It’s the only lane available to him because he recognizes the Trump dichotomy, which is personality and issues. So he can’t go after Trump on issues. He has to go after Trump on personality, which is a mistake. If you attack Trump on personality, you will lose.
The guy has to make a case so he agrees with Trump on all the issues. Trump endorsed him and made him the governor of Florida. Trump was nice to him and considerate to him after he was the governor of Florida and did whatever he could for him.
And even after DeSantis’s people started sniping at Trump, he continued to be nice to him. And so you have to ask Governor DeSantis, why are you working so hard to block Trump from being president of the United States just so you can be president of the United States?
Leahy: I think the argument would be DeSantis would have a better chance of beating Joe Biden. What are your thoughts on that?
McCabe: People tell me, we’re really tired of all this Trump static and it’s just too much. There’s just too much noise. He jumbles everything up and makes everything crazy. And we need a guy who’s calm. A calm conservative.
I can tell you, DeSantis is not the guy who calms the water. (Leahy chuckles) He banned black studies from AP black studies in high schools. He’s going after the drag queens.
Leahy: He didn’t ban it. He said that version of it wasn’t gonna work
McCabe: The AP course is banned. And he said, you know what, when AP said, hey, we don’t think the governor’s right about this. The governor says we might just throw out the SAT too. The governor has said he will throw out the SAT if the college board doesn’t behave itself.
He also took 50 homeless migrants from Texas and told them they were gonna have paradise in Martha’s Vineyard. He videotaped it so he could use it in campaign commercials and give it to Fox. I’m not saying it wasn’t a funny prank. Don’t tell me he’s the guy who’s going to calm everything down and not have static.
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.
Live from Music Row, Wednesday 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 top gov tracker for One America News, Neil W. McCabe to the newsmaker line to comment on the recent speech made by Governor Ron DeSantis at the Reagan Library and what it means for his presidential candidacy.
Leahy: On the newspaper line right now top gov tracker, our very good friend, Neil W. McCabe. Neil, welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
McCabe: Very good to be with you guys. Good morning.
Leahy: I understand you may have been traveling a little bit with top gov Ron DeSantis. Is it true that he went out to the Reagan Center and gave a speech?
McCabe: Yes, he did. He made a boss performance at the Reagan Library. And it’s not so much what he said, he basically said he’s had this sort of ongoing, how radio DJs would have this for the morning DJ and the afternoon DJ would have this feud.
That’s what he has going on with Governor Newsom of California. (Leahy laughs) So he put some logs on the fire there. What was really important was that he got the prompter guardian of the Reagan legacy, in which the Reagan people control the Reagan Foundation and then the archives run the library itself.
Just the fact that he got invited to the Reagan Library puts a presidential stamp on him, certainly with the Air Force One that’s right there in the museum of the Reagan Library. It was very much a presidential appearance forum.
Leahy: So the Reagan library is in Simi Valley, California. It’s in Southern California. Were you there in person or did you cover this on video?
McCabe: I covered it remotely. I put in a request to fly out there, but I think where our One American News mothership that is in San Diego, I think their attitude was pretty much, we’ll send somebody up from San Diego. We might send somebody local rather than drop a few grand on your little John.
Leahy: (Chuckles) Does DeSantis have an Air Force Florida One? Does he just fly commercial?
McCabe: The governor does have a jet. He’s used it to go outside the state like when he went to visit the border and things. And of course, he jets all over the state of Florida. And to be fair, it’s a big state, right? It’s not like Delaware. It’s a big state.
Leahy: Or you can walk around Delaware.
McCabe: Exactly. Yes, you can walk, you can drive through. It just costs you $25 a toll. I think that DeSantis probably maybe got a ride with a donor. Who knows.
Leahy: So his book is out. He hasn’t announced yet. I don’t think he can announce until I think there’s a little bit of legislation that has to be passed.
McCabe: There’s a law.
Leahy: Tell us about that.
McCabe: He has to resign if he runs for president.
Carmichael: And they’re changing that law. Yes.?
McCabe: They’re gonna try to and he won’t comment. Whatever they want to do, they want to do. Obviously, he wants that law to change pretty quickly. What’s absolutely delicious is that the Republican leaders of the legislature put incredible pressure on lawmakers not to file a pro-life bill this session, which opened yesterday and goes on for the next two months.
Any bill to be considered had to be filed before the session began. It begins with the governor’s state of the state address. And so minutes before the governor gave his address, which of course is the deadline, two guys filed a six-week ban on abortion or a heartbeat bill and no one saw it coming.
And it was completely stealthy. Now the governor is on record at a press conference saying that he would sign a six-week heartbeat bill. And I’m proud to say that I’m the knucklehead who asked the governor that question. And that’s the tape that’s running all over the place when people say, hey, it’s gonna pass.
And so the question now is, does the governor push for this thing or not? If the six-week bill doesn’t pass, the governor has a difficult time explaining how it doesn’t pass. If he said he’d sign it, if he said he’s a pro-life governor, everything else he wants he gets.
Because the whole reason why we want DeSantis and not someone else is that DeSantis wins and because DeSantis gets things done. And so if he couldn’t get this done, I think it’s a chink in the ammo.
Carmichael: What’s the current law on abortion in Florida?
McCabe: It’s 15 weeks now. And that’s pretty much the limit. That’s the big-time Republican donors will go to 15 weeks.
Leahy: We look at this and he is doing his book tour with The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival. We expect probably he’ll announce in June.
Carmichael: Neil, I’m assuming that they did drop a bill that allows DeSantis to be governor and run at the same time?
McCabe: Correct.
Carmichael: So that bill has been dropped.
McCabe: Correct.
Leahy: All the talk is, Trump-DeSantis, Trump coming up with nicknames for Meatball Ron or Ron Des Sanctimonious. Apparently, he’s got a focus group deciding what nickname he should use. There are some policy differences to think about. President Trump has made it clear that the Ukraine war is a debacle with $100 billion going there.
The Secretary of Treasury going to Ukraine, the attorney general going to Ukraine and the president going to Ukraine. None of ’em going to the East Palestine environmental debacle in Ohio. I do think though that President Trump is very clear that he wants the war in Ukraine ended. He said give me 24 hours; I’ll end it.
Is there a policy difference on Ukraine between DeSantis who actually served in the military as a JAG, but still he served in the military and Trump when it comes to Ukraine?
McCabe: Yes, he served as a JAG, and he was in Iraq during the surge. And Iraq, whether you were a lawyer or a clerk or kicking down doors, Iraq, especially during that time, was a very easy place to get killed if you weren’t paying attention.
Leahy: And by the way, let us say Sergeant Neil W. McCabe received a bronze star for his service to the United States of America in the Army in Iraq. I just wanted to point that out, Sergeant McCabe.
McCabe: I was there two years later, and even then, it was a very easy place to get killed if you weren’t paying attention. And frankly when people jack things up, and people don’t have their equipment straight, sometimes in the back of my head, I’m thinking are you trying to get me killed? Which is a reaction normal civilians don’t have.
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 “Ron DeSantis” by Ron DeSantis.
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 The Epoch Times senior contributor Roger Simon in studio to discuss his intentions to create a version of The Making of the President during his initial meetings with 2024 presidential candidates.
Leahy: We welcome to our studios, my former boss at PJ TV, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist, mystery writer, senior contributor, contributing editor at The Epoch Times, and one of the most widely read writers at The Epoch Times, Mr. Roger Simon. Good morning, Roger.
Simon: Good morning. I got up early this morning, and I’m feeling good.
Leahy: Looking good, feeling good. I have an idea for you, Roger. You’re a writer. Let me tell you. There was a book that I read that was just spectacular, and I read it over and over and over again. Even as a young kid, it was a book by a journalist by the name of Theodore White.
Simon: I know him well.
Leahy: Did you know Theodore?
Simon: Knew of him. I’m old, but it’s a different generation.
Leahy: The book was called, The Making of the President 1960. It was published in 1961. It was about the presidential election of John F. Kennedy, which was a fascinating election.
Simon: Oh, indeed.
Leahy: A very close election.
Simon: Still unresolved.
Leahy: People criticize Richard Nixon for any number of things, but you know, he did a really good thing for the country.
Simon: Yes. He backed out of fighting over Illinois.
Leahy: And the Texas border. That election, if Nixon had won Texas and if he’d won Illinois, he would’ve won the electoral college.
Simon: Of course.
Leahy: And he would’ve been president. In Chicago, Illinois, they went by, you know, vote early and vote often.
Simon: Indeed. A machine.
Leahy: All sorts of lock boxes in, in, in the border of Texas that Lyndon Johnson, in essence, stole—the VP. However, at that time in history, during the Cold War, the kind of problems that would be associated with a disputed election, which we had, of course, in 2020, would’ve been devastating to the country.
Simon: That’s correct.
Leahy: And as the patriot Nixon said, I think you cheated to win. That’s what he felt in his heart. I think he had the goods, but he said, no, we can’t go through it.
Simon: Yes. That’s a very interesting thing because Nixon is really an interesting character, but we can’t get him to the whole thing today because it can take forever. But there are plus and minuses to Nixon that go on and on.
Leahy: On and on. Probably one of the most intelligent presidents ever in the United States.
Simon: Like Vivek.
Leahy: Very good. Vivek Ramaswamy, who announced his campaign last week. So I have an idea for you, Roger. When Theodore White wrote The Making of the President 1960, it was, it was sort of a first-person journalistic description of what that was like to cover it and get the inside scoop. I couldn’t put it down. I’ve probably read that 20 times. It was so interesting. Sometimes you have a big hit, but you can really do it once well.
Simon: That’s usually the case. It is interesting because most sequels just don’t live up to the original, except for Godfather 2. That definitely lived up.
Leahy: Yes. Well, the sequel of The Making of the President 1964, The Making of the President 1968, and The Making of the President 1972. I read them all. Each one was worse than the previous.
Simon: More power to you for reading them all.
Leahy: But there’s been no making of the president book in that way. I have an idea for you. Others have written, but they’ve mostly all of the stories about the presidential campaigns, they’re either written by some left-wing journalist, or there’s some, you know, political hack trying to push the agenda of one of the candidates.
Simon: You’re recommending that this one be written by a Hollywood weisenheimer? (Laughs)
Leahy: I have a Hollywood weisenheimer in mind, and I’m gonna suggest that this particular Hollywood weisenheimer, Roger Simon, should consider writing a book, The Making of the President 2024.
Simon: As it happens, The Epoch Times, I think, is gonna be sending me around the country to do my initial commentary on this election. I’ve had in mind that it would turn into a book. I’m taking your advice here under serious consideration.
Leahy: I would read this book. This would be a great book.
Simon: I’m definitely going to pick it up. What I’m a little afraid of in this competition is that we are going to have another rerun. And reruns don’t tend to be that interesting. But with Trump everything gets interesting.
Leahy: True. True point.
Simon: That’s one of his assets. He keeps us guessing.
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.
