Presidential Historian Craig Shirley: ‘Biden Has Surpassed Carter as the Worst President’

Live from Music Row, Friday 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 American historian Craig Shirley to the newsmaker line to talk about how President Joe Biden is the worst president in America’s history.

Leahy: On the newsmaker line right now, the very best presidential historian in America today, Mr. Craig Shirley. Good morning Craig.

Shirely: Hi, Michael. How are you? That’s quite an introduction. I don’t think it’s true.

Leahy: I think it’s true. Look, we’ve got people who have lost their minds talking about America. Michael Beschloss, Jon Meacham, Doug Brinkley, they’ve all lost their minds on this.

Shirley: I scratch my head really and I wonder what’s happening because they were all friends of mine because they didn’t use to be this way. I guess just sniffing power has turned their head and made them something that has really ruined them.

Leahy: What a great line that is. I think you are quite right. In terms of ranking, we just got past President’s Day which is honoring the birthdays of the two greatest presidents in history. February 12th, Abraham Lincoln, I think it was February 22nd in the modern calendar, George Washington. They combined into one retail selling day.

Shirley: But Martin Luther King gets one day.

Leahy: Exactly. Let’s talk about this. You rate Joe Biden very poorly. You said this to John Solomon last night. Everything Joe Biden does seems to be about destroying American exceptionalism. I’ve come to the conclusion he’s doing it on purpose. Elaborate on that if you would please.

Shirley: Sure. He’s a Jacobin right out of the French Revolution. They were dead set on destroying the French aristocracy, the French economy, and French society and culture, destroying economics and remaking the entire French world into a new political order. And that’s what Biden is intent on doing.

He is heir to the French Revolution and the Jacobin Revolution and is dead set on remaking America. A political philosopher once said the simple answer is usually the correct one.

You and I and your listeners look at Biden and say, why is he allowing the border to run amuck? Why is he allowing fentanyl to come into the country? Why is he doing this and that? Why is spending so much money putting America deeply into debt?

It’s because he wants to destroy America. It’s plain and simple. By the way, Jimmy Carter should be very glad that Biden came along because Biden has surpassed Jimmy Carter in terms of being a very very poor president. The worst president.

Leahy: Crom Carmichael has a question for you.

Carmichael: Craig, the conclusion on Biden is exactly the same as yours. My take on Biden is that he’s a grifter in the purest sense of the word. When you take a policy to him or an idea to him and you present the idea, his first screen is, does it make me personally richer?

Shirley: Yes. I agree. And my family.

Carmichael: That’s the second screen. And then the third screen is if it doesn’t make me richer or my family richer does it make the Democrat Party more powerful vis a vis everything else? Almost like the Communist Chinese Party.

Shirley: I couldn’t agree more.

Carmichael: And so, therefore, those are the screens that he uses to look at policy. And if it doesn’t do any of those three things, then he automatically doesn’t care or is against it.

Shirley: Why has he not gone to Ohio or lifted a finger to help those people in Ohio? Because Ohio is a Republican state.

Carmichael: Right. And the fentanyl issue and the border issue, and by the way, the fortunate thing is the Democrat Party is pretty much institutionally in lockstep with Biden in that it’s a party of grifters also. I tie that directly to the immense size and power of the government employee unions and all the money that they take from government employees and use to advance their political agenda, which is $8 billion every year.

Shirley: When I was in high school physics and wasn’t falling asleep, I remember the teachers saying power cannot be destroyed or created, it can only be moved around. And we’ve had this Titanic struggle for many years about where power should reside. Should it reside with the people and the localities in the states, or should it reside with the national government?

And Biden has done his level best to move power away from the people and the localities in the states to the national government. And by the way, to his family and his party and all of that. That’s what we are always fighting. Of course, Reagan believed in federalism and wanted to move and did move power away from the government back to the citizenry.

One of the ways he did it was through tax cuts because money is an expression of power. Cutting taxes took power away from the national government and restored it to the American people. Biden is just about consolidating power in Washington with a national government and taking power away from us. And you are absolutely right.

Leahy: Craig, a year ago, you did your ranking of presidents and you had Joe Biden in the bottom five. It’s been a year later. Last night you told John Solomon that he is on his way to being the worst president in American history. It seems to me he is right now the worst.

Shirley: Funny you mentioned that Michael because I just wrote a piece yesterday for Newsmax where I proclaimed that Joe Biden is the worst president in American history. And I catalog point by point whether it is Afghanistan, inflation, spending, issue after issue, I didn’t touch on the scandals involving his son and family. But just point by point by point, I rate him as America’s worst president ever.

Leahy: I think everyone in our listening audience would agree with you on that. The question that I have is, is the electoral system structured in such a way that the Democrats have such an advantage in their ballot harvesting machines, if the worst president in American history were to run for re-election, would the ballot harvesting machine be sufficient to get him re-elected?

Shirley: That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it? We’ll find out. First of all, is he going to run? I think he’s going to run. He loves power, his family loves power and corruption. I think he’s going to run even though he’s going to be 157 years old or something.

Leahy: Pretty close.

Shirley: (Chuckles) That’s going to be the question.

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 “Craig Shirley” by Craig Shirley. Background Photo “Joe Biden” by The White House.