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 all-star panelist and senior editor-at-large at The Epoch Times, Roger Simon, in-studio to weigh in on the decline of Joe Biden, his administration, and the Andrew Cuomo sexual harassment case.
(Jen Psaki clip plays)
Leahy: There is the worst liar in American history, Jen Psaki. The purported press secretary for the Biden maladministration, saying something that’s just massively stupid. Roger, what would be the very first thing you would do? The most common sense thing you could do to help stop the spread of COVID?
Simon: Close the border. Period. End of story. I mean, of course. Something’s going on, something smells. There is a fake-out to the public here that is huge. It’s not even subtle. I mean, how anyone can believe this is beyond me. And maybe a lot of people don’t. But we’re used to being sheep.
Leahy: It’s a deliberate policy.
Simon: Yes. How can it not be?
Leahy: Yeah, exactly right. And if you look around, the array of liars of dishonest people is astonishing. From the CDC director who just says one stupid thing after stupid thing. Now the sergeant general, the sergeant general is saying something stupid.
Simon: Yes. It appears that they’re ready to vaccinate the kids. Now, that is particularly crazy, since we don’t know what these vaccines really do. They are mRNA vaccines and they could be affecting reproductive organs and things down the line.
We don’t even know that. It’s like we are living in the Middle Ages with superstitions running on. But there’s something else running on it and it’s called m-o-n-e-y.
Leahy: Money.
Simon: I’d love to quote the great H.L. Mencken. When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
Leahy: H.L. Mencken a great American journalist from the 1920s who documented the famous Scopes trial here in Tennessee back in the 1920s. You make a very excellent point. It’s interesting you talk about the similarities between the Biden maladministration, the world as it exists today, and the Middle Ages when everything was anti-science back then.
Simon: Right.
Leahy: And anti-fact. I hear some of these “scientists” talk, and I think: you’re just a propagandist. You’re not a scientist.
Simon: They’re either under the pay of somebody. (Chuckles) It’s not directed, but it’s very clear. You play by the rules, we support you. You don’t play by the rules. We don’t support you. The same way unions work.
Leahy: The whole concept of principle seems to be gone, and now everything’s being replaced by a sort of tribalism. And the tribes in the United States at the top are the elite, the Big Tech guys, the Democrats. And maybe, is that what is that? Ten percent of the country, five percent of the country telling the rest of the country what to do?
Simon: Maybe two percent.
Leahy: Maybe.
Simon: The word elites always disturbs me too. It disturbed Donald Trump, too. I remember in a couple of speeches he was pointing at the audience and saying, you’re the elites, because they’re not really elites. They’re just bullies.
Leahy: That’s a good point. By the way, story at The Tennessee Star. I’d like to get your reaction to this. Headline: Texas Congressman Calls for the Impeachment of Biden Over Immigration Policy.
Texas Republican Congressman Chip Roy is calling for the impeachment of President Joe Biden and the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, citing their “reckless immigration policy” that many lawmakers argue is endangering the lives of Texans and Americans. What’s your reaction to that?
Simon: Well, I support it, but good luck to him. But obviously, Biden is taking over. Probably not at his own behest. I wonder who’s really behind it all?
Leahy: Who is manipulating Biden’s brain? That is functioning below-average level.
Simon: Barack Obama. I think it’s second degree. Goes through Susan Rice. She’s sitting there in the White House and passing it on.
Leahy: That’s a good theory.
Simon: That’s my theory about have – it’s only a theory.
Leahy: So Joe has always been, you know …
Simon: A yes man.
Leahy: A yes man. Has he ever had an original thought? All of his thoughts are whatever the party says? Other than to make money from your family.
Simon: There is an interesting video, I think it’s still on YouTube before being blocked. There’s an interview with Clarence Thomas about when Biden was interrogating him during his confirmation hearings in 1991.
And Biden was saying collegially uncloaked to Clarence Thomas. You and I understand this point because we’re both lawyers. Thomas said he didn’t have a clue what Biden meant. (Laughs) Biden is not the brightest bulb. He wasn’t the brightest bulb then and it’s dimming.
Leahy: He went to Syracuse University Law School, and he was in the bottom third of his class.
Simon: Lower than that. And he actually plagiarized. He didn’t plagiarize as people do in college very often, like a slight paragraph because they’re not very smart.
Leahy: And don’t know how to cite it.
Simon: He just copied an entire legal brief page to page. (Leahy laughs) In law school! Think about that one.
Leahy: That kind of gives you an insight. I think if you look into his pattern of behavior, he basically was sort of like a high school athlete type guy, and he thought he was the coolest guy in town and didn’t really hit the books that much, from what I can tell.
He’s social. Very social. Just ask Tara Reid. (Laughs) Tara Reid is the woman who accused him of sexually harassing her. But apparently, the only sexual harassment stories that he focuses on right now have to do with Andrew Cuomo.
Simon: Yes. Because Cuomo is so ganged up on that Biden has to go that way.
Leahy: Where does the Cuomo story end up in your view? What’s your best guess?
Simon: This is one case where he actually might be impeached. I think he’ll be impeached.
Leahy: Will he be convicted?
Simon: He might be convicted of impeachment.
Leahy: I’m kind of with you on that. He’s gonna fight it all the way.
Simon: Of course. (Inaudible talk)
Listen to the third hour here:
– – –
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 “Andrew Cuomo” by Andrew Cuomo.
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 author and former acting director of ICE Tom Homan to the newsmakers line to discuss the motives of the Biden administration’s lack of law enforcement at the southern border and pending lawsuits.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmakers line by our good friend, former acting director of ICE under the Trump administration. And like me, a native of upstate New York. The man from Watertown, New York, Tom Homan.
Homan: Good morning sir.
Leahy: Well, Tom, I look at this disaster on the border over the past, what is it now? Almost going on six months. And my question to you is, is what Joe Biden doing, is what the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas is doing, violating the immigration laws of the United States, is that an impeachable offense in your mind?
Homan: I think it is. Their number one responsibility to protect this country and protect your sovereignty. And they have abdicated their responsibilities to secure our border.
They’re ignoring existing law. What they’re working really hard at, they’re making illegal immigration legal. They’ve already told ICE they can’t arrest anybody for just being in the country illegally.
They are releasing people at the border without any court date. And now they’re talking about and in the process of reinstating the CAM project, where people can apply for asylum in their home countries, and we will transport them at the taxpayers’ expense in the United States to reunite their families.
It’s at a point where I actually wait for they cannot believe where we’re at as a nation.
Leahy: Tom, what’s the solution to this problem?
Homan: You know, we can’t wait for 2022. I’m involved with several lawsuits. With the state of Texas, they’ve got five separate lawsuits filed against this administration. I’m a party to four of them.
I’ve written more affidavits, against the Biden administration than I’ve written in my entire career against criminals. (Inaudible talk) I’m a part of the Arizona lawsuit.
So I’ve been acting as an expert witness for a lot of the state attorneys general suing the Biden administration before and they’re doing exactly what you said they’re doing.
Not only are they ignoring the law, we believe they’re actually breaking laws. One of the lawsuits clearly says in the statute in Title Eight of the United States immigration law says that ICE shall detain those convicted of certain drug offenses, those who have final orders of removal from an immigration judge, and those who have committed crimes in perpetude.
It says I shall detain these people. They’re not detaining any of them. They’re releasing them. And I’m not blaming the ICE officers.
They’ve been put in a tough decision by this administration. They were given a memo basically saying that you can only use somebody in the United States for being here illegally if they have been convicted of a serious crime.
So for some, it’s almost like being in this country illegally isn’t illegal anymore? And they don’t think that serves as another enticement for cartels.
Look, we’ll get you to the border and we’ll get you in the country, you can even lose your case. And you win because no one’s looking to remove you.
This administration, I said many times, isn’t mismanagement. This is incompetence and by design. This is what the border looks like.
Leahy: I think you are right. I think it is by design. Let’s talk about this character, Alejandro Mayorkas. He seems to be perhaps one of the most practice liars I’ve ever seen.
In other words, he tries to set forward an explanation, couched in legal terms to explain why he’s violating the law. What’s your take on this guy?
Homan: I don’t recognize him anymore. When he was deputy secretary, I was third in command of ICE back in 2014, 2015.
We had a similar surge, not this big, but we had a surge. He knows what causes surges, and he knows how to stop them. I’ve had over 100 meetings with him.
Leahy: You’ve had over 100 meetings with Alejandro Mayorkas?
Homan: Yes. Back in ’14, ’15. And we stopped the surge. How did we do it? We built detention facilities with over 3,000 family beds. 3,000 beds.
We tell people long enough to see a judge. And when a judge order to remove which 90 percent would be able to removed, we removed them.
The numbers went down. He’s doing the complete opposite of what he knows works. They are not detaining them and they are working as quickly as they can to release them as fast as they can.
They’re being released without a court date. And we can’t remove them because ICE can’t remove someone for just being here illegally anymore.
He’s done the complete opposite of what we did in ’14, ’15 when he was a Deputy Secretary on how to stop this surge. That’s what I’m saying. This is by design. He knows how to stop this. He just won’t take the steps.
Leahy: Would you say Mayorkas is a highly intelligent man?
Homan: He was a US attorney. He’s an attorney by trade. He’s not a stupid man at all. What he’s doing with these open borders is he sold out to the progressive left, just like Joe Biden did.
And they’re running that an open borders agenda and he is facilitating it. Here’s a sad thing. I’m 59 years old. We have the first president in the history of my life and I’ve been in immigration law for 35 years, and the first Secretary ever that is actively facilitating illegals entering this country. Actively facilitating cross-border crime.
Leahy: Now, let me ask you about this. What’s the motive here? In your view? You react to what really is right. You probably don’t look at motive that much.
But I look at this and I say, okay, who’s behind this? Is this Biden’s desire? Is it Mayorkas’s desire? What are they trying to accomplish?
Homan: In my opinion, the open border advocates have control of the White House.
I know for a fact, a lady by the name of Esther Olavarria is working at the White House as a senior policy advisor who is an immigration activist out of Miami.
She and people like her have hijacked this administration. Like I said before, Biden sold himself out to win the progressive left. He knew it was important for him to get the votes from the progressives to become president.
So he sold out just to become president. And I think about this all the time. What could actually benefit? Here is who benefits. All these people come across the border, millions of them are going to sanctuary cities.
What happens then? Well, Biden also overturned the Trump census, which means then I’ll be counting the next census. But what’s that equal?
It equals more seats in the House for the Democrats which leads to the Electoral College. They’re offering amnesty to millions of people.
They think they’re future Democratic voters. This is about Democrats set the stage playing the long game for perpetual power.
And I’ve met with 20 Republican congressmen out in Texas about a month ago, and I told them, you guys need to pull your head out of your butt and pay attention to what’s going on.
Leahy: You didn’t say butt, I’m pretty sure I did.
Homan: No I didn’t. I said, maybe you don’t care, but you won’t win another election in 15 years if you don’t wake up. The Democrats are playing the long game and you’re ignoring it.
Leahy: Yeah, I think that’s it. Let me ask you this. Mayorkas. Now you’ve been in with him. He’s an interesting fellow to me. I think he’s very, very clever, but totally amoral in my view.
I’ve never met him. But you said you’ve been in hundreds of meetings with him. Is this like a one on one meeting you’ve been in? Or meetings with like 500 other people?
Homan: Mainly one on one meetings and many group meetings. And I would tell them how do we ran into this surge in ’14, ’15 and what we need to do to stop it.
And Jeh Johnson listened to us. And they did it. Listen, Jeh Johnson when he was Secretary and Mayorkas was deputy, we built with their approval 3,000 family beds.
You never see them do that today. And the so-called cages and what everybody is screaming about and said that Trump built, no, those were built when Alexander Mayorkas was Deputy Secretary.
That’s why I’m saying he’s doing the complete opposite of what he knows works. This isn’t an accident. He is not the same man he was back then.
He believed in border security. He let us do things to stop the surge. You can’t name one thing. You can’t name one single thing they have done to slow the flow or to add a consequence and returns.
They just keep making things easier. They stood out on the national stage a month ago saying, hey, look, there is no overcrowding border trouble cities.
We’re processing these quick kids quickly and getting them out. That’s a success. You may call it a success, but I call it a failure.
Because the quicker you release people and brag about it, the more they’re going to come because they know they won’t be detained.
Leahy: Yeah, that’s my sense. You were an acting director of ICE for a period of time. What’s morale in ICE like?
Homan: It’s never been this bad in the history of the agency. I mean, last month, you said the lowest number of arrests in the history of the agency.
At the same time, we have a record number of people coming to that border and entering illegally. The lowest number of arrests.
They’re not allowed to do their job. And I said before, and I mean, this is I can put in one sentence. An immigration agent or a law enforcement officer can no longer arrest somebody from being in the country illegally.
An illegal alien gang member can walk up to an ICE agent today and say, I’m here illegally. I was ordered to be removed by an immigration judge last year.
I didn’t go. What are you going to do about it? The answer is, they can’t do a thing about it. They can’t arrest them. This is where we’re at as a nation.
The men and women of Border Patrol and of ICE truly feel the President United States has abandoned them. They truly feel that they don’t support them. The Secretary or the President or the Vice President won’t even admit there’s a crisis on the border.
Listen to the full first hour here:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 am 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 Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in the studio to discuss Tennessee’s stance on Critical Race Theory and questioned why the state is not leading like Florida in the representation of its values.
Leahy: In studio mayor of Maury County. Yes, the bastion of freedom in Tennessee. (Laughs)
Ogles: Turbocharged.
Leahy: Oh, we got to change that. The mayor of Maury County, the turbocharged bastion of freedom.
Scooter: I see tourism posters now. (Laughter)
Leahy: Yes, the turbocharged. That’s very good.
Ogles: About every two weeks, we’re adding phrases to this. Another month from now, this is going to be like a whole paragraph of descriptors for Maury County,
Leahy: Maury County the turbocharged bastion of freedom. You know, Andy, I am the unofficial ambassador for the state of Tennessee to people who live outside of Tennessee, because every time we have a guest who’s a good conservative-minded, I point out to them that wherever they’re living, if they live outside of Tennessee, that we have no state income tax here. And they all start whining and say, when can I get there?
Ogles: That’s right. Book me a ticket.
Leahy: So I suppose I’m also kind of a subset of that. I may be perhaps not an ambassador, but a promoter of Maury County as well. That turbocharged, bastion of freedom in Tennessee. I wanted to talk to you about this and get your reaction, Andy.
The rally last on Saturday night in Ohio, attended by now it looks like around 30,000 people. The former President began by lambasting the absolute disaster that the five months under Joe Biden have been.
The first thing he listed was the disaster at the border where the current maladministration is refusing to enforce immigration law. By the way, that refusal is probably an impeachable offense, in my view.
But he also mentioned the fact that they’re trying to force Critical Race Theory everywhere in K12 schools as well as in the military of all places, because, you know, nothing says defending the sovereignty of America like having a woke military.
I want to bring this back around to Tennessee. A couple of stories at The Tennessee Star today on Critical Race Theory. I wanted to get your reaction, Andy. So Corinne Murdock our ace reporter and Hillsdale Graduate has this story.
Part of the Wit and Wisdom Curriculum May Violate Tennessee’s Critical Race Theory Ban, According to Moms for Liberty. The parent coalition is concerned that the Wit and wisdom curriculum approved for use in 33 counties and promoted by Governor Bill Lee’s handpicked Secretary of Education Penny Schwinn, may violate Tennessee’s K-12 Critical Race Theory ban.
My question to you is, why does Governor Lee pick a Secretary of Education who’s promoting a curriculum that looks like it violates the new law banning the teaching of the tenants of Critical Race Theory in K-12?
Ogles: Wow, that’s a loaded question.
Leahy: I’m just asking. inquiring minds want to know what, Andy?
Ogles: But you even go back before that. Why would we have a Commissioner of Education, Penny Schwinn who puts forth this well-being initiative where every child zero to 18 would be interviewed by an agent of the state without their parents’ permission or presence?
And why wasn’t she fired then? And so why would we be surprised? And keep in mind, Critical Race Theory is a label that represents an agenda. It’s not necessarily a curriculum. And so we’ve got to be careful with these labels because then they say, well, wait a minute.
Well, this isn’t Critical Race Theory. It’s wit and wisdom. We’re simply trying to educate your child. We’re trying to educate your child on this agenda that totally undermines our country.
And so why she hasn’t been fired by either the governor or by the General Assembly demanding her resignation is a travesty of the values that represent Tennessee?
Leahy: Why would somebody who purports to be conservative hire such a person?
Ogles: He’s not. At the end of the day, the governor is a nice guy, but he’s not a conservative.
Leahy: Well, I think there’s a general consensus that he’s a nice guy. Asterisk, my question to you is if he’s such a nice guy, why does he never respond to The Tennessee Star inquiries?
Why has he not shown up on our radio program? We can get an exclusive interview with the former President of the United States, but we can’t get Governor Bill Lee to return our phone calls.
Ogles: Right.
Leahy: That’s a mystery.
Ogles: I would love to sit in studio across the desk and have this debate. The three of us. It’s an open invitation to talk about some of these substantive issues facing this country in the state of Tennessee.
Tennessee should have been leading the past 18 months the way Florida and Ron DeSantis have led. And when you compare Tennessee to Florida, we have failed across the measure.
Leahy: Yes. Florida is kind of the standard, isn’t it? Isn’t Ron DeSantis, the kind of governor that every state needs? Every state needs a Ron DeSantis pushing against the egregious intrusions upon state sovereignty and the violations of the fundamental concept of federalism that are coming out of the mal-administration of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Joe Biden. That’s my view. Why can’t every state have a Ron DeSantis?
Ogles: Well, again, I think one it’s a difference in personality and it’s a difference in core values. Ron DeSantis did not back down during COVID when you had the cruise industry trying to mandate and require vaccines.
He stood up to the cruise industry, a multi-billion dollar industry forcing them to change their policies. Meanwhile, in Tennessee, we don’t have the courage, if you will, to take a stand and protect individuals from these mandates.
I just saw in The Tennessee Star that you have a college in Memphis that’s going to require all students to get the vaccine. You have to show proof of vaccination in order to come to the University.
College students aren’t at risk for COVID. Let’s identify the vulnerable and make sure it’s available to them. Then we’ve got to move on and move forward but these mandates are a direct infringement on liberty and medical freedom.
This vaccine now has a warning on heart inflammation. So now we’re a year and a half into this thing, and we know more about this vaccine than we knew just a few months ago and they’re having to put warning labels on it.
And yet the government is requiring and mandating it. Holy crap! This is not acceptable.
Leahy: It’s very interesting how the bureaucrats are playing this Critical Race Theory ban on the tenants of Critical Race Theory. I kind of get the impression that the Educrats who are almost all lefties running the major school systems in Tennessee, the big ones, I think they’re kind of playing us.
It’s my view, anyway, but they say one thing, and then I think they kind of do another. Let me just get your reaction to this story, and we ought to have these guys in if they’ll come in. It’s interesting.
The spokesperson for Metro Nashville Public Schools ideologically, not necessarily what we’re aligned with will talk to The Tennessee Star. Governor Lee will not. I don’t know if I told you, but former President Donald Trump will exclusively talk to The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Just in case, for a matter of comparison right now, interestingly enough.
Here’s the headline. Metro Nashville Public School Says It Won’t Implement Critical Race Theory by our great reporter, Corinne Murdock. Metro Nashville Public Schools informed The Tennessee Star that it doesn’t plan to implement Critical Race Theory.
Metro Nashville Public School spokesperson Sean Braisted. Do you remember him? He used to be the spokesperson for Megan Barry.
Ogles: There you go.
Leahy: That guy. He responded to The Tennessee Star about remarks from the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion Executive Officer Astrid Hughes. Did you know that Metro Nashville has a diversity, equity, and inclusion executive officer? (Ogles giggles)
Now you do. We asked whether Hughes would implement any of the banned tenants in Metro Nashville’s forthcoming Equity Roadmap. And if Metro Nashville Public Schools plan to implement Critical Race Theory.
Here’s what Sean Braisted responded. “Mr. Hughes was not suggesting those reading materials be a part of the school curriculum, but rather that those interested in discussing the subject read about what they are discussing.” Really? Really? I’m not quite buying that, Andy. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too skeptical about Educrats.
Ogles: When you look at this trend that’s taken place over the last 10, 20, 30 years, the Educrats as you say, first got into the universities. Now they’re pushing it into the seminary.
They’re pushing into our high school and now or even our elementary schools. And once you capture the minds of the children, you’re changing the next generation. You’re affecting politics.
Listen to the full second hour here:
– – –
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 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 Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies Mark Krikorian to the newsmakers line to discuss the repealed immigration policies of Trump that has lead to the Biden administration’s inability to control the border surge.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line right now by our good friend, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian. Mark, what a terrific piece you had on Thursday in the National Review about Vice President Kamala Harris’s, your words, layover in El Paso.
I wanna take this sentence from your article and just get you to elaborate on this. ‘As hard as it is to believe the Biden-Harris administration was taken by surprise by the border surge that it caused.’ Can you tell us more about that?
Krikorian: Yes. The administration probably knew that there was going to be some increase at the border when they undid all of the things Trump had done which successfully stabilized the border.
I mean, Trump didn’t solve everything but definitely had stabilized the situation. They basically expected a little bit of a surge, but Mexico would help them suppress it, and people would listen to their pleas not to come.
Remember, the Vice President went down there and said, do not come, do not come. They’re kind of like Jimmy Carter back in 1980. I know it’s a long time ago, but Jimmy Carter basically did the same thing with regard to Cuba.
He said, anybody who gets out of Cuba, we will welcome them with open arms and open hearts. And Castro looked up and said, hey, that’s a great idea. So he emptied his jails. 120,000 people streamed out of Cuba until Jimmy Carter was like, oh jeez, that’s not what I meant.
(Leahy laughs) But he was able to shut it down because he hadn’t run on immigration. He wasn’t boxed in politically. This administration has run as the anti-Trump. And since immigration was one of Trump’s top things, they had to undo everything Trump did, creating this disaster that they really don’t have any good idea about how to fix.
Leahy: Yes. It seems very obvious they don’t have any good idea how to fix it. Crom Carmichael is our all-star panelist in Studio. Chrome has a question for you, Mark.
Carmichael: Well, if, Mark, if they do want to fix it, then the obvious answer is to return to Trump’s policies.
Krikorian: Of course. But my point is they can’t do that just psychologically or politically. Right? It’s not going to happen.
Carmichael: I think the obvious conclusion is they don’t want to fix it because there’s an obvious answer on how to fix it. I guess my question to you is that they’re not going to return to the policies of Trump. And so the surge is going to actually get worse. Would you agree?
Krikorian: Yeah, sure. There’s no question. In the summer, it may actually dip. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. The numbers may actually go down a little bit because it is unbelievably hot down there this time of year.
And frankly, if you are planning on sneaking into the U.S., not just Central Americans, but now we’re getting people from Romania, Uzbekistan, India, and everywhere trying to get in on the action here, some of them may figure, well, let’s cool our heels for a couple of months somewhere where there’s air conditioning, and then we’ll come.
So the numbers could go down a little. But even if they do, they’re just going to go right back up in the fall. Not to get too long into it but this is not some long historical thing we always have to deal with.
This surge is the result of specific loopholes in the law that was passed in 2008 and 2009 and other changes since then. So this is not something we just have to deal with in perpetuity. Congress and the President over several administrations created this problem.
Trump stabilized it again. That’s what I mean by he didn’t fix the loopholes, but he did stabilize it. Biden took something that was fixed and broke it. And it’s not going away until we fix those loopholes and change the things that make it attractive to sneak in. Because the odds are good that you’ll just be let go.
Leahy: What are the major loopholes and what are the chances of fixing them legislatively?
Krikorian: The chances, I can tell you now are zero until there’s a change in Congress and the White House. But not to get too wonky, there’s a provision that says so-called unaccompanied minors, and we kind of take your word for it that you’re under 18 can’t just be returned home.
They have to be given hearings. They have to be delivered into shelters and delivered to their parents who are here illegally often paying to smuggle them. That has to be changed. There’s a court ruling that Congress can overrule that says minors, even if they’re with their parents, can’t be held in immigration detention for more than three weeks.
But they have to be let go, including the parents. There’s more to it than that. But that’s the kind of thing that we have basically created the situation in a time when there weren’t a lot of kids or families coming over.
People in Congress figured out what’s the harm? Make us feel good. Virtue signaling, and it won’t really have any consequences. Well, within a few years, the problem exploded because these things started really in 2008, and 2009 is when these were passed.
It blew up under Obama in 2014. It’s just been getting these ups and downs, but it’s just been getting worse ever since.
Leahy: What you take on the job, direct Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has been doing?
Krikorian: Terrible but terrible because that’s what he was hired to do. In other words, he’s doing the job that this administration hired him to do, which is, first of all, not to enforce immigration law.
ICE, which is under his purview, is basically not permitted to do immigration enforcement except in the most extreme cases of terrorists and spies. And that sort of thing. Other than that, illegal immigrants have a free pass.
Leahy: Let me ask you this about Mayorkas. Is his failure to enforce our immigration laws an impeachable offense?
Krikorian: That’s kind of up to the Senate. They could impeach him. The House in the Senate, and frankly, they probably should, but they shouldn’t have approved him in the first place. And anybody who replaces them is just going to do the same thing because this is what the President promised to do.
This is a political problem in the sense that we’ve got to get rid of or change who’s in the White House and then change who’s in the majority of Congress before any of this can change.
Carmichael: Mark, is Mayorkas not upholding the law, or is he exploiting loopholes? And the reason I’m asking the question is in a new administration, once he is out of office, could he be indicted for not upholding his oath of office?
Krikorian: I don’t know. Probably not. I don’t think he’s upholding his oath of office, but I don’t think the president’s upholding his oath of office. The Constitution requires the executive to faithfully execute the laws, and that’s not what Biden is doing.
It’s not what Mayorkas is doing at Biden’s instruction. So, I mean, potentially, I guess. But I don’t like the criminalization of politics. I think what we need to do, and this is me talking as a citizen, CIS doesn’t get involved in elections, but as a citizen, the solution is to get rid of these guys from office and put in somebody who actually is going to do what’s necessary.
Carmichael: Here is I guess question, and you’re hitting on an excellent I’m asking you something in your responses philosophical in nature, which is appropriate. But if Republicans were to retake the House and have a majority in the Senate, but not 60 and have the presidency, you can’t fix immigration legislation with less than 60 votes.
Krikorian: You can’t fix everything, obviously, because of the filibuster. But the filibuster is protecting us this time. Do you know what I mean? There is a great reason for it. But there’s a lot of smaller things that can be changed that some of them the Democrats may go along with.
You put package deals together. Okay, they get some of this. We get these four immigration loopholes fixed. It’s not impossible. The first thing is, you need to get control of the majorities in Congress and get somebody in the White House.
Leahy: Last question. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the chances of fixing any of this over the next three and a half years?
Krikorian: Oh yeah. I mean, pessimistic isn’t a word. There is zero possibility of any of this getting fixed.
Listen to the full third hour here:
– – –
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 TN (R) U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty to the newsmakers line to answer questions related to his January 6 vote as new election irregularity evidence mounts in Georgia, S1, and the continuing border crisis.
Leahy: We welcome to our newsmaker line our friend, Senator Bill Hagerty. Good morning, Senator Hagerty.
Hagerty: Good morning, Michael.
Leahy: I want to talk about a couple of things in this segment. Georgia, S1, and the border. So in Georgia, the light of the ongoing evidence that no chain of custody documents exist for more than 300,000 absentee ballots cast in Georgia in November 2020 and reports of massive regularities in Fulton County, it appears to me that Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger’s decision to certify those results were, in fact, as a Georgia GOP convention recently found a dereliction of his constitutional duty.
Here’s my question for you. If you knew on January 6, what we know now about Georgia, would you have joined Jodi Hice in objecting to those Electoral College votes?
Hagerty: Michael, let me take both parts of your question. First, Georgia, because we haven’t talked about it. Then we’ll come back to January 6. You and I have talked about that in the past.
I didn’t need to see this latest evidence on the chain of custody in Georgia to know that there are serious problems there. In fact, I was down in Mar-a-Lago in April with President Trump reviewing the Fulton County data.
We were going through it in 15-minute increments at that point. There are major irregularities in Georgia and those are regularities that need to be addressed by those people responsible for them. And that’s the states.
And you and I’ve talked about this. The states are the ones that are given the responsibility and the authority to set the rules. They should be addressing this. And that’s the reason that President Trump loves the legislation I put for one of the first pieces of legislation I put forward as a sitting senator which is to protect the Electoral College Act.
And what that requires is an audit of the 2020 election to find out every state where the Constitution was violated and in any state that violated the Constitution. And I believe there were a number of them.
Those states will not receive any federal funding for their elections until they rectify that. That’s related to the conversations that we’ve had in the past about January 6. You recall, I said I would, and I objected to the Arizona results.
It was the first state that was objected to. I did that because I wanted to debate the formation of a commission. A commission that would identify those places where the Constitution was violated and put it back to the states to fix that before the inauguration.
That is the right way to fix it. I was never going to vote to federalize the election. I was never going to vote to give Congress the authority and take it away from the states. That would be the first step if Congress were to take control of the elections and we allowed Congress to change the result every time you’ve got the legislature in control of a different party than the incoming President.
That’s just the first step toward doing away with the Electoral College, in my view. And that’s not something that we would ever support. I don’t think you would, either. That conversation about forming a Commission completely changed when the capital was breached.
When the riots broke out, we were sequestered, put away and the conversation changed very quickly from debating a Commission to invoking the 25th amendment against our President to be impeaching him. The best thing to do at that point was to shut this thing down and focus on fixing it in a different manner.
And that’s why I put the legislation together that I brought forward to require an audit of all the states that violated the Constitution and again deprive them of funding until they repaired it.
Leahy: Crom Carmichael is in studio and he has a question for you on that, Senator Hagerty.
Carmichael: Senator, I have a question in regard to January 6. There’s evidence that now comes out that the FBI had people inserted in these groups. And some of the reports I’ve read is that the FBI was actually helping to insight the riot. Do you all have any information that the riot that happened was contrived?
Hagerty: Crom, this is very disturbing. I’ve heard the same reports that you have. I would actually be meeting with FBI Director Wray today. We have very, very strong reason to be concerned as a nation when we find out how the intelligence community has been abused, how law enforcement has been abused, and we need to get to the bottom of this.
Do we know the answers to this with certainty today? No. But are these serious serious questions? Absolutely, Crom.
Leahy: Well, that’s breaking some news that we didn’t know – that you’re meeting with the FBI director today.
Let’s talk about what happened last night in Washington. S1 came up with a 50 50 vote, didn’t get the 60. They needed to break a filibuster on it. What’s your take on what happened last night?
Hagerty: What happened last night, I think, was very predictable. What you had underway with this S1 was a blatant power grab by the Democrats in the most narrow, narrow majorities.
It’s a 50, 50 Senate right now. And the only way they controlled is because of who’s occupying the White House. They’ve tried to push through one of the most blatant power grabs ever.
And this is legislation that’s been lying around. The components of it have been lying around at Democratic smoke-built backrooms for years. They tried this right after the 2016 election.
They brought this up in the first part of 2017. The emergency, then and the crisis then that they brought forth was the fact that Trump was elected. Of course, that was wholly unacceptable to them.
So if you look back at what they brought back in 2017 essentially the same sort of thing, they tried it again in 2018, even in 2020. Nancy Pelosi tried to put this through, using the pandemic as the excuse in her effort to again rewrite all the election laws under the guise of a pandemic emergency.
And now the latest emergency that they’re siding, again this was their excuse, is the crisis that’s being caused by states trying to come in and impose some election integrity after the 2020 election.
It’s ridiculous. It’s nothing but a blatant power grab. And as I said, if we allow them to federalize elections, which is exactly what they were trying to do, they are going to use this as the first step, I think, to do away with the Electoral College and completely take control.
Carmichael: Senator, Michael, earlier in the show where I maintained that a lot of what’s going on by the Democrats in Washington right now essentially a head fake because what the Democrats are not being able to accomplish through the legislative process they’re accomplishing through the administrative process.
For example, the Secretary of Defense kind of unilaterally just came out and said that the Code of Military Justice will no longer apply to cases of sexual harassment and that they will be referred to the Justice Department, which I think is a huge change in the military. What are your comments on what’s going on in the administration?
Hagerty: I’m very concerned about this type of activity is something that I’m looking into right now. In fact, you had an extensive meeting on it yesterday utilizing the Congressional Review Act to come back and take these executive body administrative decisions like you described, apart and subject them to congressional review.
Because something like this would not pass congressional muster. What they’re trying to do again is just a blatant power grab. They’ve swung so far to the left I think they’re trying to reshape America into something that most of us can’t even comprehend.
And we’ve got to push back at every turn, and Congress has an important role to play. And so I’m looking into utilizing the Congressional Review Act to go after misuses and abuses just like you described.
Carmichael: So if we retake the House and the Senate, the Congressional Review Act, does that require 60 votes?
Hagerty: 50 plus one.
Carmichael: 50 plus one on the Congressional Review Act. So there’s a lot of authority to push back against administrative overreach if we can retake the House and have control of the Senate.
Hagerty: Absolutely. And there’s no reason to stop right now because you’ve got Democrats that I do not believe are as far left as the outspoken minority that seems to get all of the media amplification.
You think about leaders like Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema, who will have a very hard time supporting or voting with some of these extremist policies that the Biden administration is putting forward.
There’s no reason to wait 18 months. I think we should start right now. And that’s what I’m going to put in motion because we cannot wait another day. We can get this. We’ve got to start pushing back on this immediately.
Leahy: Senator Hagerty, let’s talk about the other big issue out there, the border here. It appears to me that the Biden administration is absolutely failing to enforce our immigration laws and the border is entirely open. What in Congress can you do about that?
Hagerty: Well, one of the first things that I did is I took the absolute first official congressional trip done by the Senate of the pandemic. I’m the only member of the United States Senate that actually has diplomatic experience.
I served as U.S. ambassador to Japan, the third-largest economy in the world, after the United States and China. I’ve had experience doing this sort of thing, and I went to Guatemala, into Mexico, just like Vice President Harris did all be it a full month before she did.
I met with the President of Guatemala. I met with his Foreign Minister. I explained to them the urgency of the situation. We need to stop the crisis at the border right now. The talk about root causes, they were very clear to me.
The President of Guatemala was very clear to me what the root cause actually is. The root causes are the messages coming out of the White House. It’s Joe Biden in his campaign saying, hey, if I win my election, I’m going to treat you better.
It’s Joe Biden saying, we’re going to reunite families again? The President of Guatemala said to me, the Coyotes immediately began marketing and collecting children, getting their parents to give them their life savings to undertake one of the most treacherous journeys imaginable.
They are praying on the most vulnerable in their society. Using again, messages coming out of Washington, D.C. Messages like a $15 an hour minimum wage, $1,400 of free money going to illegal immigrants.
These messages are being marketed by Coyotes. They’re enriching the cartels, and they’re creating this massive illegal movement that’s destroying nuclear families in their countries. They don’t like this one bit.
They’re very upset about it. And they made it clear to me that we have a lot to do with this. We mean, the Biden administration being the most important and significant root cause and causing our border to collapse has really made something else happen as well.
And this is where the leadership of Mexico made very clear to me. The Mexican Foreign Minister when I met with him, said, look, China is moving in. They’ve stepped up their fentanyl operations in my country.
In Mexico, they’re shipping more precursor chemicals, more fentanyl in. They’ve got Chinese lab technicians working with the cartels making fentanyl in Mexico and shipping it across this porous border.
Our Customs and Border Patrol agents are all tied up dealing with these families, dealing with these unattended minors. Meanwhile, the cartels are shoving more and more drugs across our borders.
And as I talk with sheriffs in law enforcement in Tennessee every day, they told me since January, since the border collapsed, they’ve seen a dramatic rise and overdoses and death from Fentanyl and Methamphetamines. Where is it coming from? Mexico? Who’s manufacturing it? The Chinese.
Leahy: Senator Bill Hagerty. Thanks so much for joining us. I know sometimes we ask you questions that are a little tougher than maybe you get from some folks. But you always step up. You always come on. You always answer the questions. We really appreciate that.
Listen to the full third hour here:
– – –
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.
