Host of Fox Nation’s ‘No Interruption’ Tomi Lahren on Adversity at Clemson, Arizona Border, and Woke Corporate Culture

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 Fox Nation contributor and host of No Interruption, Tomi Lahren to the newsmakers line to talk about facing adversity from BLM and college socialists in her recent visit to Clemson University, Arizona Border, and how the joke is on the woke corporations.

Leahy: We are joined on the newsmaker line by our good friend Tomi Lahren, Fox Nation host. And Tomi you went to Clemson and they didn’t want you to speak. Why are you so dangerous, Tomi?

Lahren: (Laughs) You know, sometimes the truth is a dangerous thing, especially on college campuses nowadays, which is really unfortunate, because historically, college campuses are the places that used to really foster free speech and it was a marketplace of ideas. But now college kids have become so conditioned to only hear the things that they want to hear and anytime that that’s threatened or anytime that they’re challenged to expand outside of that echo chamber of the liberal indoctrination, it’s scary to them. It’s like a hole in their safe space and I think I was a threat to that safe space. But the show went on anyway.

Leahy: Well, set the scene for us in Clemson. When did it take place? Who invited you? How many people were there? How many were protesting? Again, why are you so dangerous? I still don’t get that. (Laughs)

Lahren: We’ve been working on this event for a couple of months and it took place this past Thursday night at Clemson. But we’ve been working on it for a couple of months. I was invited by the Clemson Turning Point USA chapter. They have a huge Turning Point chapter. And for those who aren’t familiar with Turning Point, it’s a conservative college campus organization on most campuses across the country.

Thank goodness they really provide that safe space for Conservatives that Conservatives don’t really have on college campuses. But they invited me. And originally we knew that doing an event Backing the Blue was the steam of the event and we knew that was going to probably be controversial just because, unfortunately, in the times in which we live supporting law enforcement and Backing the Blue is not a popular concept, especially amongst young people.

But we planned the event and of course, there was an outcry, the college Democrats, the young college socialists, the BLM-affiliated groups on campus tried to cancel the event. They tried to petition the University. They had a petition on Change.org that was about 4,000 signatures. And they really wanted the University to be pressured to just cancel the event altogether. Well, that didn’t work.

The University held strong, but when that didn’t work, just all-out canceling the event, they turned to tactics that these groups use not only on college campuses but elsewhere when they have Conservative events. They tried to sign up with fake ticket sales to try to really take up all the tickets from kids that wanted to be there. And then take up those tickets themselves and then not show up.

That’s a popular tactic that the left is used with Trump rallies and other events. And when that didn’t work because Turning Point found a way around that one, too then they thought by making threats or running up the security costs that they would make the event too expensive for Turning Point to afford or for the University to afford.

(Scoffs) And then when that didn’t work, we decided, hey, listen, let’s have the event in a smaller room. We were going to have it in more of like a student union room, ballroom type area but we felt that that couldn’t be secured. And with the number of people that were coming, we needed a bigger venue. So we moved the event over to the Littlejohn Coliseum which is the basketball arena and they were unable to cancel it. And it just gave us a larger capacity and the show went on.

Leahy: You put a tweet out with a picture. It looks like there are, like, I don’t know a couple of hundred lefties with BLM masks with their hands raised. How big was the opposition to you there?

Lahren: It was hard because they were scattered, but there was 300, 400 protesters out there. Black Lives Matter Group,  BLM showed up, college Democrats, the New Black Panthers showed up, but I wasn’t outside thank goodness. We were escorted in through the back. But the funny thing is that my Fox Nation team was there and they captured the whole thing.

And it will be debuting later this month on Fox Nation. And my producers were actually there interviewing the protesters and asking questions. But we found out that these protesters didn’t really have consistent messaging. They didn’t want me to be there. They said I’m a white supremacist. They didn’t want the University to hold an event for a white supremacist, and they didn’t want to Back to Blue.

But they also would deny that when you asked them a second time. So their message was very inconsistent. But because their messaging was inconsistent, they turned to then heckling and harassing those that were coming in. It was rather disgusting. They were yelling things at the ladies that were going in, telling them that they were ugly and telling that their clothes were ugly and telling them that they were racist, this and that, and screaming at the top of their lungs. And it was quite disgusting. From what I saw, just things that you would never say to anybody, but especially to your fellow peers and classmates.

Leahy: Who knew Tomi that a kid from Rapid City, South Dakota, was so dangerous. (Laughter)

Lahren: I have to remind myself of that often.

(Commercial break)

Leahy: Tomi, a question for you. When you go to Clemson and all of the snowflakes decide that you’re just too dangerous to talk and want to keep you from talking, what do your parents out in Rapid City, South Dakota, who are average, hard-working, middle-class Americans, what do they think?

Lahren: My parents have been around this for quite some time now, so I think that the strangeness has worn off a little bit. And they’ve been with me when I’ve had the protesters. Unfortunately, they’ve been there with me when I’ve had water thrown on me and they were right next to me and had water thrown on them as well.

So, unfortunately, they’ve had to deal with a lot more than a lot of parents have to deal with. But for me, it’s always just the safety that they’re concerned about. And luckily, we had a lot of great security at Clemson. It’s kind of interesting that we’re doing a back to Blue event and we had to have so many cops there to protect me and also to protect all the protesters and all the people that wanted to be there. So it’s one of those things. We always just got to be safe, but it’s become a natural part of my life at this point.

Leahy: Where do you intend to speak next so that there will be some sort of conflagration from the crazies on the left against you for some unknown reason?

Lahren: There are actually a lot of Turning Point chapters now. They’ve been very inspired by the event, and I want to take it on. We’re actually talking to one of the Turning Point chapters that’s closer down to the border because I just got home from the border. And I did a two-part episode there. They want me to come on back down and speak to their college campus about some border issues and maybe more in that kind of a theme. So we’ll see.

I love to get out and speak to college kids. It’s really difficult right now because of all those COVID protocols and the social distancing and just how interesting our college system has become now. But every chance I get, I think we really need to take our message and bring it to the college campuses. That’s how we start fighting in the culture war that Conservatives have largely been out of way too long.

Leahy: Tomi, when you went down to the border, what did you discover?

Lahren: Oh, boy. So there’s been a lot of emphasis placed on these processing centers and these detention centers. That’s what you’re going to see on the news. And that’s what’s causing the outrage really on both sides, which is understandable. But the American people are just seeing that and they are not really seeing the real issue that’s going on, which is all the people that are getting across the border, not just the unaccompanied kids that are coming across, but the adults that are coming across while the border patrol agents are so occupied taking care of these unaccompanied minors, that’s when the worst of the worst is really coming through.

You’ve got a border wall that’s been halted. You’ve got agents that are being taken away and having to be taken to the processing centers to essentially babysit. And that’s when you’ve got these gaps and you’ve got these issues coming through that are worse than people can imagine. That’s when the drugs are coming through, that’s when human trafficking is coming through, that’s when the individuals that are coming into this country, not to make it great again, but to fulfill their own needs.

They work for a criminal organization. That’s what’s coming through. In Arizona, where I was but there’s a lot of emphasis placed on Texas right now, but Arizona year to date, they’ve had an estimated 50,000 ‘got aways’, which is exactly what it sounds like. People that have never been fingerprinted, process, detained, arrested nothing, people that are simply getting through. And that’s just an estimate. And that’s just Arizona alone.

Leahy: Which was more dangerous for you? Your speech at Clemson on Thursday or your time at the border in Arizona?

Lahren: (Chuckles) They’re very different. Every border trip I’ve gone and this is my border trip. I’ve been with Border Patrol. So during the Trump administration, it was very secure and safe because we were with Border Patrol themselves, shadowing them. And of course, there’s always danger there because we shadowed them in their real-life responding to calls as they would.

But it’s always been a safety element because we were with Border Patrol. Well, this time, Border Patrol there is that implied and not so much implied, but it is a gag order on Border Patrol. So I had to go out and spend time with landowners, with the Sheriff’s Department, with people that are just out there to share their stories. So it’s always a little dangerous anytime you go to the border. But it’s one of those things that you just don’t even think about. You just go out there and do it.

Leahy: Last question for you, Tomi. So this is interesting. There’s a report, on Saturday, 100 corporate executives met in a virtual meeting organized by a Yale Business School Professor to determine what they could do to stop election reform bills, bills designed to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. Apparently, Fortune 500 executives don’t like that.

The attendees there were Arthur Blank, owner of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, James Murdoch and his wife, the son of Rupert Murdoch, the head of AMC Theaters that have a big law firm. They had the CEO of Walmart, the CEO of United are Airlines, American Airlines, Chip Bergh from Levi Strauss, and of course, Reid Hoffman a far lefty if ever was one, the CEO of LinkedIn. And the President of and CEO of Viacom CBS. What do you make of this effort by Fortune 500 company executives to overturn the legal processes of state legislatures in America today.

Lahren: We’ve been conditioned to have to deal with this. We know what happened in November 2020, and we know when our President Donald Trump spoke about voter fraud and election integrity, we know that that was very much a sit-down and shut up message. And then they really used the events of January sixth and the insurrection to really quiet people and to keep people from talking about voter fraud.

And then when you’ve got states like Georgia that’s taken it into their own hands and say, hey, listen, whatever squirrely business happen, we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen again. As you mentioned, we’re going to make it hard to cheat, easy to vote. Now you see corporations stepping up and saying, how can we add to the conversation? How can we be a part of cancel culture?

How can we be a part of the mob that can go and silence this and change this to give power to Democrats for generations to come? It’s really quite disgusting. But the only way we as average citizens who care about election integrity the only way we can stop any of this is to let these corporations know that it won’t be tolerated. As Conservatives, we don’t like the term boycott. We don’t want to boycott Major League Baseball. We don’t want to boycott the airlines.

We don’t want to boycott any of these companies that are participating in this. But at some point, we are going to have to make our voices heard because they don’t know how strong our numbers are. They don’t know the silent majority is a real thing because we are far too silent. So now is the time that we need to stand up and say, hey, listen, you companies want to be woke? You want to participate in this cancel culture? You want to mess with our elections? Well, hey, guess what? Money talks. and the silent majority, we have a lot of it.

Leahy: You mentioned Major League Baseball. They made a very stupid and controversial decision to move the Major League All-Star Game scheduled for July in Atlanta in Cobb County with the new stadium up there which is 50 percent black, by the way, because they didn’t like the election reform law passed by the Georgia state Legislature. Rob Manfred, who think has played baseball a day in his life. He’s a Harvard Law School grad with no common sense.

The Commissioner decided on his own to move it to nine percent Black Denver, Colorado, which apparently has it’s a better place for Major League Baseball these guys think. This conference call was attended by the head of CBS Viacom. They broadcast The Masters from Georgia. That was okay, apparently. What do you make of all this? Hypocrisy, Tomi

Lahren: Yeah. I think that this is a classic example of them getting in way over their head trying to be woke and it backfiring in a major way. But we saw this a few years ago with the NFL and then cow-towing to the protesters and kneelers, and we saw where their fans went. So I think it’s going to be, unfortunately, much the same for Major League Baseball or golf or any sport that decides to go the woke route.

But again, I think it’s interesting because they look so ridiculous because they didn’t really think it out because they didn’t think that they would be questioned. They thought that they were going to be able to do this. They were going to move the All-Star Game, and everyone was going to applaud them for how woke they are and how wonderful they are, and what social justice warriors they are with their almighty virtue signal.

And it backfired in a major way. And it’s actually kind of funny. I think that this is going to happen more and more to companies when people start poking holes in their stupid decisions that they have not thought through. And it’s up to us to keep applying the pressure and pointing it out every chance we can.

Leahy: Tomi, I saw a very funny tweet from Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas. He said, have any of these executives actually read the Georgia law? I’ve read it. It’s common sense. It makes it easier to vote, harder to cheat.

Lahren: Oh, absolutely. And that’s the thing people need to understand, having to show an ID to vote to prove you are who you say you are. That is in no way racist. In fact, the more racist element of that is those that are criticizing it, thinking that somehow minority and Black communities are unable to show and obtain a valid driver’s license or a form of identification.

Just assuming that is somehow voter suppression to me is the most racist, condescending element of this whole argument. And that’s why we need to keep pointing that out. You should vote and be able to vote easily. But you have to be who you say you are, and you can’t vote illegally. You can’t vote twice, and you can’t vote dead. Not too much to ask.

Listen to the second 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.