Live from Music Row Tuesday 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 Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in the studio to discuss the potential for the 2020 election results to be decertified and the consequences of unelected bureaucrats.
Leahy: I’m always glad to have that great, steady, calming influence of that find Southern gentleman Andy Ogles, the Mayor of Maury County.
Ogles: Good morning. Because, you know, it’s good to have that calm, thoughtful, responsiveness to the hot energy I bring when we’re looking at these election issues. I would love to get your reaction to this.
And we have a story at The Tennessee Star. I’ll read the headline and the first two paragraphs and then get your reaction. This is a national story, but it does have state impact because we’ve got the problem here of illegal aliens coming into Tennessee. And it’s causing difficulties and expenses from the state.
We’ll get to that in a bit. Let me look at this story. I want to get your reaction. Headline. Former Trump Campaign Advisor Boris Epshteyn Predicts States Will Decertify 2020 Election Results.
Boris Epshteyn, attorney and former strategic advisor to the 2020 Trump campaign predicted many states will decertify their election results for the November 2020 election. In an interview with Gina Loudon, our friend, Epshteyn said the series of audits that may occur could lead to the reversal.
Additionally, this is what he says. There is no language in the Constitution that prevents such a move. “The further we go on this freight train of audits from Arizona to Georgia to Pennsylvania, and the more deeply horrifying information is uncovered. Ballots missing. Databases missing in Arizona. Fulton County, chain of custody documents missing in Georgia and Atlanta. Pennsylvania, a total cesspool of disaster. The more that information comes out, the more Americans believe this was a fraudulent election,” Epshteyn said.
What do you make of this claim that states will decertify their election results?
Ogles: I think that the last statement is key. We’re in unprecedented waters here constitutionally. The question is, there is no mechanism. So what happens next? And so ultimately, you think, well, it’s going to get kicked to the Supreme Court.
Well, the Supreme Court has already dodged this bullet. They wouldn’t hear it. You only had two dissenting votes in that case, and it was Alido and Thomas. So if they decertify and there’s a case to decertify and it goes to the Supreme Court, What’s the standing? How do you get standing before the Supreme Court?
Leahy: Neither of us are attorneys. But I think you’ve asked a critical question. I do think that it’s entirely possible that Georgia and Arizona, and in particular, Arizona because the state Senate is Republican.
The state House is Republican, same as in Georgia, although they’ve been a little weak in Georgia, they’re controlled by Republicans. I think it is possible that a special session could be held or even a regular session in January.
And reviewing all this evidence, I think they could say we vote to decertify the election. Okay. What’s the impact of that? And the answer is in terms of legal mechanism, nothing. Now in terms of public opinion, however, and I think this is the angle they’re going at.
I think a growing belief that this was an unlawful election and in many cases, and we’re looking in Georgia more and more that they can’t produce chain of custody documents as we speak today, seven and a half months after the election, there are no chain of custody documents for more than 300,000 absentee ballots cast in that election where the margin of victory was less than 12,000.
Ogles: Wow. At what point does this one become criminal? But, you know, I’ve had the opportunity kind of here as COVID’s been waning to speak, quite frequently across the state. And I can tell you, overwhelmingly, as I go around and I’m talking to these various groups from Jackson to Knoxville and everywhere in between that people think this election was stolen.
And I think more and more of these audits are showing that there’s a whole lot of monkey business or incompetence that took place. But at the end of the day, we were defrauded out of a true and honest election.
Leahy: Well, that’s the mantra now from the Secretary of State in Georgia. Sloppy but not fraudulent.
Ogles: Yeah, right.
Leahy: Sloppy, but not fraudulent. And it’s not just The Georgia Star News our site in Georgia. Just the News. Did you see what they got? John Solomon’s group. They got a 29 page memo from this guy by name of Carter Jones, who observed what happened in Fulton County from November second to November seventh.
And it is just a litany of a massive chain of custody problems. We’ve only reported on the movement of absentee ballots, which, by the way, they still haven’t produced the 385 missing transfer forms for 18,000 ballots to us at The Georgia Star News.
Fulton County claims to provided or Georgia Public Broadcasting complains that they provided all the missing documentation to them on Wednesday in 48 hours of receiving a request from them.
Six and seven months after we’ve requested it. We don’t have any of that data yet. They still haven’t provided it to us. And by the way of the ones we looked at, five percent of those absentee ballots were delivered to the registrar before they were collected at the dropbox. (Ogles chuckles) Time travel. If you believe in time travel, you believe in the certification of that election.
Ogles: I mean, that’s like Pulitzer Prize-winning. You just proved time travel.
Leahy: Time travel!
Ogles: But, you know, Laura Baigert who was on this story for The Georgia Star News, she got a shout out from our former President Trump. That has to be an amazing accomplishment from a journalist’s perspective.
I mean, Trump is Trump. Whether you like, like Trump or dislike Trump, he’s in his own kind of stratosphere. And to be given a shout-out by the former President is pretty amazing.
Leahy: Well, he’s tracking this, and it’s important stuff. And what’s interesting is you get in the weeds on this stuff. But in an election where you have absentee ballots placed in drop boxes, what a formula for fraud that is.
By the way, the Georgia state legislature did not authorize the use of drop boxes. There were 300 around Georgia. 37 in Fulton County not authorized. It was an emergency election code rule passed by the Georgia State Election Board that put them in place.
They had a rule about how you track them. So it’s very complicated. But the chain of custody was broken on so many levels there. The way they worked it is you would put these ballots in a dropbox.
And then these election workers, some of them who worked for apparently, this attempt service called Happy Faces, who got the contract with Fulton County because they were represented by wait for it…Stacey Abrams. (Ogles chuckles)
Gee, what could go wrong there? But what we can trace is they took these ballots, apparently, to a warehouse. And they held them there until they were going to count them in the election. Supposedly they tracked the movement of absentee ballots from 37 drop boxes to the warehouses.
They’re also supposed to, although it’s not an election code rule, apparently, there were some instructions that there’s a mechanism for tracking the movement of absentee ballots from the warehouse a couple of days before the election to four miles away to the counting center at the State Farm Arena, and then back.
You’re supposed to put them in a box. Number the boxes and track all that. They haven’t done that at all.
Ogles: So you’re saying an unelected bureaucrat change election law under the nose of the legislature, kind of like CRT in Tennessee.
Leahy: Exactly like it. This is why this is kind of circling back to what is making people so angry.
Ogles: That’s right. Because our bureaucrats are doing things that they’re not authorized to do by law, and we’re being forced to live with it. And not just on the consequences of this election, but in everyday life and in everyday life here in Tennessee.
Ogles: That’s right.
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.
Live from Music Row Tuesday 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 Job Creators Network’s CEO Alfred Ortiz to the newsmakers line to talk about their cheeky billboard that calls out Major League Baseball Commissioner Manfred on pulling All-Star Game from Atlanta.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line our very good friend, the CEO of Job Creators Network, Alfredo Ortiz. Good morning, Alfredo.
Ortiz: Good morning Michael. How are you?
Leahy: Well, it’s great to finally interview you on the radio. We’ve been on a lot of projects together and worked together. And I must say, my hat is off to you my friend because you are the man behind what I’m going to say now is perhaps one of the most iconic Times Square billboards in history. And tell us what the billboard says and tell us what the reaction has been.
Ortiz: Yeah, well, you know, as you know in the news, there’s been a lot of conversation about the pullout from the All-Star Game out of Atlanta and the Commissioner Manfred. Manfred being the guy who made that decision. And so we’ve been trying to make a statement about that because in Atlanta it cost $100 million for mainly minority small business owners. So the billboard we just put up went up first thing Monday morning, basically says Commissioner Manford, all strikes, no balls? (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: Wait just a minute, just a minute. So you’ve got a picture of Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, who, by the way, from what I can tell he is a Harvard Law School grad attorney. I don’t think he’s ever played baseball in his life. I think he made this politically correct just out of a knee-jerk reaction to pressure from left-wing groups. I don’t think I even looked at the Georgia election law, the common-sense election law.
Ortiz: Right.
Leahy: But just to be clear, you’ve got this is so funny. I don’t know how you came up with this Alfredo. It’s just pure genius. (Ortiz chuckles) So there’s a picture of Rob Manfred, and it says, wait for it…All strikes and no balls?
Ortiz: Michael, I don’t even understand. It just like a baseball term, isn’t it? But in all seriousness, I think it’s so appropriate because of the way we see it, right? First of all, we call them the way we see them. And strike one, first of all, is he gave in to the whole misinformation and all the lives of this woke crowd about the Georgia voting law. As you said, I doubt he even read the darn thing.
Strike two, he moved the MLB game out of Atlanta on that false information. And then the third strike against him, he cost the state of Georgia again, mostly minorities small business owners. Estimates are over $100 million in lost revenue for again, primarily minority-owned small businesses. And for what? To move it to Denver, of all places, probably one of the most white suburban areas that you can find, right? You’ve got Atlanta that is like minority to nine percent Denver.
You’ve got nine times as many Black-owned small businesses in Atlanta then there are in Denver. Yet he decides to make the move to Denver out of Atlanta. And so what are we doing? We’re basically saying, look, Commissioner, do the right thing, move it back. You hurt minority small business owners. And with the same speed at which you pulled it out of Atlanta, you can put it back in.
Leahy: Has he sent you a response to that request yet Alfredo?
Ortiz: You know, oddly enough, he hasn’t called me for lunch yet. And I’m not quite sure why Michael. (Leahy chuckles) I’m still trying to decide that. But just in case he missed the billboard, we’re going to go for a letter very soon here that’s going to be hitting his desk. And we’re going to try it again because again, there is time. He literally made that move.
Michael as you know in two days. Basically, in two days, he made that move. And so we’re saying move it back because that is the right thing to do. Forget the woke culture, the Stacey Abrams pressure, which is absolutely ridiculous and complicit in all this as well. I’ll put the Delta’s and I’ll put the Coca-Cola’s in there because they are also part of complicit in this dissemination of misinformation on the Georgia Voting Act.
And, of course, they’re taking this playbook now, Stacey Abrams and company and taking it to all different States. And basically what I’m calling it is extortion. It’s kind of the old mafia shakedown of our public companies and CEOs.
Leahy: Let’s go back to the decision to go with all strikes and no balls? (Laughter) How does that idea? I mean, it’s perfect. It’s beyond perfect Alfredo.
Ortiz: Well, you know, Michael, you probably remember that we started off kind of on using billboards. I’m an old marketing guy, and I like billboards. I know it’s an old media, but I actually think it really works. And Times Square is so powerful. Remember when AOC brilliantly decided to push Amazon out and the 25,000 jobs it was bringing to New York City? We put up a nice billboard on that, which basically says, thanks for nothing AOC.
And we started that, of course, then she got on Twitter and we responded with a billboard. So it was the famous billboard Twitter war between us. And so part of it is just we need to be public about this. I think part of the issue that Conservatives have is that they’re conservative by nature and we’re afraid to go out there and take the gloves off and just really go at it. And the left doesn’t do that.
The left just comes out, they intimidate, and they push against the wall. We’re so ginger about so many things in our conversation. I think we need to get to this point, Michael, where we just take these stances, we make it public and we go, you know what? Enough is enough. We’re going to make these comments that we’re going to say things like all strikes and no balls Manfred because that’s exactly what it is.
And so, again, we’re going to be holding people accountable we’re going to be holding public officials accountable. We’re going to be holding CEOs accountable because I think we’re at the point in this country, Michael, where people are just fed up. People are just so fed up about all this wokeism and all this other stuff, and it’s just really now hurting this country.
Look what happened in Georgia. Again minority small business owners primarily got hurt. Cobb County, Fulton County, minorities, and minority-owned small businesses. $100 million. I mean, what are they going to do? How are they going to get back $100 million? Is Coke or Delta going to write a check for that amount to cover that loss now?
Leahy: Well, that’s a very good point. Now, the billboard has been up in Times Square in New York City for a little over 48 hours. Tell us about the reaction to that billboard in the media and around the country.
Ortiz: Well, it’s gotten a lot of attention as you can imagine. People have actually made comments about my own particular. I wouldn’t even say it.
Leahy: (Laughs) I got you. We know what you mean, Alfredo. You don’t have to say it. We got it. (Ortiz laughs)
Ortiz: From this perspective. People are finally saying thank goodness. A group, an organization that finally speaks up. And Molly Hemingway picked up on this right away. She’s got, like, 600,000 Twitter followers.
Leahy: From The Federalist.
Ortiz: And I have to tell you, I mean, the response, if you look at that Twitter feed, it’s been great. I think, like, 99 percent of the people are like, yes, stand up! A few people are like, well, you know how we immature and stuff like that. Sure. Maybe if you want to call it that. But I don’t think I actually think it was very mature. We’re just calling it the way it is.
Leahy: It was just an accurate description of what kind of guy. Rob Manfred, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball is all strikes and no balls. I don’t even think you need a question mark on it. (Ortiz chuckles)
Ortiz: Here’s where he could basically redeem himself, and it would show that he actually does have a pair is moving it back to Atlanta.
Leahy: (Laughs) That’s very good, Alfredo. That’s very good. Our listing audience is cracking up as we go. And our in studio guest Andy Ogles Mayor Maury County is laughing because it’s so funny. The Job Creators Network is based in Atlanta. You basically represent the ideas and policies that support small businesses around the country. I notice CNN is also based in Atlanta. Have they paid any attention to this story?
Ortiz: Oh, are you kidding, Michael? C’mon. They wouldn’t cover this at all. As you notice, you rarely hear about the plight of small businesses. In fact, I haven’t seen a single story on CNN, and I may go back and try to find one and there may be one in the past three years. But really, the plight of small businesses is not covered at all by CNN.
It’s not covered at all by the left media by the lamestream media, as we call it, right. And that’s because they don’t want to highlight that because really small business owners are being really just crucified effectively by some of these policies that Biden has already put in place or looking in putting place. We’re actually calling it the war on small business.
Leahy: Yeah, it is.
Ortiz: If you really look at what’s happening. First of all, the COVID came out of nowhere. It hit these small businesses. Thank God though, under the Trump administration, we had a great program that was put out there that we actually got very involved in with the paycheck protection program. It saved 50 million jobs, Michael. 50 million jobs across over 5 million businesses in this country.
And when we needed to do more they just stalled it, stalled it, and stalled it. It’s a miracle that the small businesses that were able to pull out did actually pull out. Once the Biden administration came in, instead of coming up with other great programs like that. What are they doing? They’re talking about federally mandated $15 minimum wages. They’re talking about potential tax increases in three different ways.
A million small business owners that do their taxes, and our C corps. A million of those could be subject to that increase of 33 percent on that corporate tax rate. And then you have another 15 million small business owners, Michael, that are probably going to also feel the pain and the bruise if they roll back that 20 percent tax deductions that so many small business owners use to pay higher wages, hire more people, more benefits, and invest back in their businesses.
They might lose that. And then to top it all off, the third round of potential tax increases that he’s looking at is the increase on the top tax rate. So every successful small business owner that actually survives through this and kept people on the payroll is now going to have a tax increase on top of everything else.
Listen to the full broadcast 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.
