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 original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss the weak response to Cuba’s communism, the Democrat Party’s support of authoritarian government, and the conspicuous inaccuracies of the Capitol Hill riots.
Leahy: In studio with us, the original all-star panelist, Crom Carmichael. Crom, you know, I saw a lead story at Breitbart. They had an exclusive interview with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
And basically, he said everything that the Biden administration is doing dealing with Cuba is wrong and weak. And of course, this is a constant theme that I have.
We have a Beta male serving as secretary of state. The former lead partner of the not so esteemed law firm Winken, Blinken, and Nod. Antony Blinken.
Their idea is, I think, let me subvert America’s interests. Let me bow down to every other tyrannical dictator in the world and just beg them to have mercy on us.
Carmichael: It’s really quite something. The latest story on Cuba is that the Biden administration has so far denied Cubans the Internet. And our security people said if we want to provide the Cuban people access to the Internet, we can do that quickly.
Leahy: Why haven’t they done it?
Carmichael: Because they support authoritarian governments and that is something that the Democrat Party wants to emulate.
Leahy: They want to emulate them. And of course, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has and all the Black Lives Matter leaders have been critical of the protesters in Cuba, from what I can tell.
Carmichael: Yes, because they’re in favor of the regime. But Cuba is not in isolation. You have the Biden administration who is determined to lift the sanctions from Iran to give them the funding back that they needed and used in the past to terrorize the Middle East. And I can’t explain that because there is no logical explanation for funding.
Leahy: I have a theory.
Carmichael: Ok, please.
Leahy: I think they are deliberately trying to destroy the United States of America. That’s my theory.
Carmichael: And Israel, while they are at it.
Leahy: But let me just stop for a moment because what’s the alternate? Are they just dumb and stupid or they’re just caught up in ideology? Is it deliberate, Crom?
Carmichael: I don’t know, but let me say this. That is a great question. I do not know the answer. But when you look at four, you have four countries.
The other two, in addition to Cuba, where they’re not doing anything to help the people who are calling for freedom in Iran, they’re backing the regime and not only backing the regime against their own people.
They want to give money even though they know that the last time they gave them a bunch of money there were terrorists all across the Middle East. Terrorist acts all across the Middle East funded by Iran.
Leahy: But you said even though they know. I think it might be because they know.
Carmichael: And then that would make it even worse. But for me, this kind of falls in the category of: do I want to get hit by a truck going 80 miles an hour or a train going 80 miles an hour.
Leahy: Either way, the outcome is the same.
Carmichael: So whether they know what they’re doing is terrible or whether they’re doing the same terrible things because they’re fools, the result is the same.
But they’re kowtowing to Russia and letting Russia build their pipelines while they are canceling pipelines here in the U.S. And so to claim that pipelines themselves are hurting global warming junk –
Leahy: That seems to be consistent with my theory that they’re deliberately doing this.
Carmichael: That they are trying to crush the West. And then the last country, of course, is China.
Leahy: Of course.
Carmichael: Where China has now been caught hacking Microsoft and probably many other hacks. They steal our intellectual property, and Biden is doing nothing. He just does nothing.
And this does not end well for the American people. The deeper question for me is, let’s assume the public wakes up. And let’s assume that the appropriate voter laws are in place so that the Democrats are unable to cheat.
Leahy: The way they did in 2020.
Carmichael: The way that I believe they did too.
Leahy: Lots of evidence out there.
Carmichael: A lot of evidence, but it’s not conclusive. But there are trials that end with the preponderance of the evidence.
And this is more – this is not a criminal trial. This is a civil trial in the way that we’re thinking about this. And that is because we’re not going to change the result of the election.
Leahy: Zero, zip, nada chance of that.
Carmichael: No. Biden is president. And if he cheated to get there, then they were clever in the way they did it.
Leahy: My phrasing, of course, is legal, but not legitimate.
Carmichael: But the deepness of the deep state, we were talking about Michigan, you couldn’t embed FBI agents. And we also now have word that there are a number of FBI agents embedded in the January sixth riots.
Leahy: More than two dozen according to Tucker Carlson and the documents that he’s received.
Carmichael: And then the footage. All of the video footage is still being held back.
Leahy: That we can’t see.
Carmichael: So why is the video footage being held back from the public? It’s because to me, the answer is because they don’t want anybody going through the video footage and identifying individuals who either A, might be members of the government and the FBI or B, might be members of some left-wing groups and that they are inciting other people to do things that they shouldn’t do. Then there’ll be video, lots of video of Capitol Hill Police literally holding the door open for people to walk in the door.
Leahy: Yes. Now, were there some people who broke windows and climbed through windows?
Leahy: Yes, there were. Who were they?
Carmichael: But were there many, many more people who walked through open doors being held open by the Capitol Hill Police? And the last thing – and then I want you to jump on this one –
The last thing is we do know that the head of the Capitol Hill Police made five telephone calls asking for additional support and was rejected each time by Nancy Pelosi’s aid.
Leahy: The Sergeant at Arms who reports directly to here. Who I’m sure called her and said Madam Speaker, should I help this guy out?
Carmichael: Should I authorize more support?
Leahy: And she told them, no. That would be my guess. Yeah, I don’t know that for sure.
Carmichael: Well, they won’t tell us. Michael, you and I are left in what we’re doing here. We’re left to form opinions based on the facts as we understand them.
Leahy: Yes. Which is very limited. Very limited at best.
Carmichael: But it’s on purpose.
Leahy: Yes, a lot of things are delivered these days from the deep state. We’ll be back after the news.
Listen to the 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.
Photo “Cuba protest” by Perlavisión Cienfuegos CC BY 3.0.
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 reflect on his visit to Cuba in 1959 and experiencing Communism.
Leahy: In studio with us, all-star panelist, Roger Simon. Roger, when we left our audience, you were in an airplane. It was 1979. You were trying to land in Havana, Cuba.
You were with a bunch of lefties. And you were the only one who spoke Spanish, which is what the air traffic controller spoke. Tell us about how you talked the pilot down.
Simon: I’m not a great linguist, but I made it. Anyway, we got on the ground. (Leahy laughs) And here’s what I discovered about Cuba right away.
And I think a lot of people know this. First of all, it is a gorgeous island. It’s one of the most beautiful places on God’s green Earth.
Unfortunately, God has upset the joint. But on the other hand, it is one of the saddest places I’ve ever been. In fact, it might be the saddest place.
And all those beautiful DeSotos driving around the first five minutes, you say, oh, look at all those great old American cars. And then you realize what the people are living like.
And I was meeting all these filmmakers down there because I was at this film festival, which is really a propaganda film festival, of course.
And they’d be saying how great everything was. And then they’d whisper in my ear, either in English or Spanish, depending, on how do I get out of here? Help me.
Leahy: How often did that happen?
Simon: Oh, four or five times.
Leahy: Did you start to get a clue?
Simon: It happened in the Soviet Union too.
Leahy: You were lefty at this time.
Simon: Yeah, but I wasn’t – I was always more of a tourist lefty you could call it.
Leahy: A tourist lefty.
Simon: Or I could say to you, my life as a hypocrite.
Leahy: (Laughs) And by the way, this is what everybody loves about you, Roger. Your use of language is so precise and so cunning. My life is a hypocrite. I like that line.
Simon: Well, thank you. But that’s my job to write things. But that’s why today when we look at these people marching in the streets – who are emaciated if you look at some of them.
Leahy: In Cuba?
Simon: And then you look at our government and how little attention and how embarrassed they are because, after all, AOC and Bernie may not like this.
Leahy: What’s Bernie said about the Cuban protests and the support for freedom?
Simon: Bernie is concerned for their health care. (Leahy chuckles)
Leahy: Oh my goodness.
Simon: These are people who have a secret policeman on every block. We’re getting there ourselves. That’s where we’re headed.
Leahy: I think we are headed in that direction.
Simon: It goes back also to the Iranian Revolution of 2008 when they were trying to free themselves. And the people in the streets of Havana were shouting, Obama, Obama, are you with us? Or are you with them? Meaning the ayatollah. And Obama said nada.
Leahy: So nada is what basically the current secretary of state, the former partner at Winken, Blinken, and Nod -Antony Blinken -that guy, the ultimate beta male.
Simon: (Giggles) Yes.
Leahy: They’re not helping out there for the people in Cuba.
Simon: I think they find it an embarrassment to them, and they don’t want to hear about it because what it shows is the decline of our country and the sadness.
Beth Harwell and you were talking about this at the end of your last hour. It used to be that America was the bastion of freedom and that we would be there for these Cuban people, but we’re not. And it’s only 90 miles off Key West.
Leahy: Do you think if Donald Trump was still president, what would he be doing right now?
Simon: I don’t know exactly but he’d be certainly making a lot of noise.
Leahy: He’d be supporting help, at least verbally. Maybe more.
Simon: I was listening to one of the other programs on his network yesterday with Clay and Buck and they were debating the issue of whether we should intervene. Clay was more of an intervener.
Leahy: Clay was more of an intervener?
Simon: Yes.
Leahy: That’s interesting because Buck’s a former CIA guy. Maybe memories of the Bay of Pigs were in Buck’s mind.
Simon: The CIA is often guilty of bad planning, among other things. But there are things that could be done, but our current administration couldn’t do anything.
Leahy: They’d do nothing.
Simon: They’re more interested in those evil people who were at the capitol on January 6, not the starving people of Cuba.
Leahy: Tell us more about your 1979 visit there.
Simon: One of the interesting things about Cuba, and this relates to that visit, is the romanticism of Fidel that we all had in those days. When I was a 15-year-old kid in New York, I wanted to hear Fidel in Central Park.
Leahy: This was before he took over?
Simon: No. Just like four months.
Leahy: ’58, ’59. So tell us about that speech and your reaction.
Simon: I couldn’t hear the speech because Central Park was so filled with people because mostly it was Dominicans there who, by the way, were all begging for Fidel to liberate the Dominican Republic.
Leahy: Did he deliver the speech in English or Spanish?
Simon: Actually, Fidel didn’t speak much English, so he wouldn’t have bothered. At that time in New York City, there were so many Spanish people.
Leahy: This is sort of a throwaway line, but I personally blame the former major league team, the Washington Senators, for the Cuban Revolution. Do you want to know why? Because he was a pitcher in Cuba.
Simon: Oh right.
Leahy: And supposedly the Washington Senators considered making him an offer, and they didn’t. (Simon chuckles)
Simon: I sure wish they had. (Laughter) He was bad enough. But Che Guevara was worse. Everyone idolized Che without knowing that what she did do was – former buddies who disagreed with him about the party line in a marginal way –
Leahy: They got the Trotsky treatment. They were lined up against the wall and shot. Nothing says freedom like getting lined up against the wall and getting shot.
Simon: They did it faster than Stalin did it to Trotsky.
Leahy: It took him many years to do it to Trotsky.
Simon: Exactly. Un momentito.
Leahy: So when you left Cuba after – how long were you there?
Simon: I was there for about a week. It was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. But leaving was very difficult because we got to the airport to leave, and all of a sudden, this is a Communist dictatorship.
The plane wasn’t allowed to land to pick us up. And we were terrified. Speaking of my life as a hypocrite, we were desperate to get off.
And one thing about being in Communist countries, which I’ve been to a few times, is they are giant jails. And you are very aware of the fact that you’re in jail, even though the jail may be gigantic. So you’re starting to sweat like crazy.
Leahy: Because you want off.
Simon: We got off after sitting in the airport for a full day.
Leahy: A full day?
Simon: And we finally got off because someone appealed to Raúl Castro.
Leahy: Are you kidding me?
Simon: No.
Leahy: Who appealed to Raúl?
Simon: I don’t know. To this day, I don’t know. But here I am.
Leahy: So somebody called them in the United States or somebody from your group?
Simon: Someone internally in Cuba.
Leahy: Somebody in Cuba asked them.
Simon: Yeah. I don’t know who.
Leahy: What would have happened if the plane didn’t land? Where would you be today? (Laughter) You wouldn’t be on this show.
Simon: I would be a high party official bossing people around. (Laughter) It was the beginning of my education about communism because communism is not communistic. Communism is a form of fascism where the top people get really rich.
Castro died a billionaire. Most people don’t realize it. Although he had several homes and yachts and all that stuff and all these other people you can see on television or watching there are not too rich.
Leahy: Exactly.
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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 GOP candidate for Nashville’s Fifth District, Robby Starbuck in studio to discuss his bringing with Cuban immigrant parents and his first job at MySpace.
Leahy: In studio, Robby Starbuck is with us. Good morning, Robby.
Starbuck: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
Leahy: We just ran up the stairs.
Starbuck: We sure did.
Scooter: You guys need a little time to catch your breath? I got some perfect music.
Leahy: Robby needs less time than I do.
Scooter: I got here specifically at this time to make sure we got our exercise. It was one of those things, you know, where you hit every red light, every single red light on the way here.
Leahy: I do that some mornings.
Scooter: It happens. But in the nick time.
Leahy: Scooter goes 30 seconds. 15 seconds!
Scooter: I’m looking over and I’m in the last element in our thing here. And I’m like, uh oh, they’re not back. This is going to get weird.
Leahy: Robby Starbuck. Robby welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
Starbuck: Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here. I know that pretty much all of my neighbors are in love with this show. The where they were very excited.
Leahy: Your neighbors have very good taste.
Starbuck: They do. They’re smart people.
Leahy: This is your first time in studio.
Starbuck: It is. It is. So I’ve been on a couple of times, but this is the first time I made it here for the full show.
Leahy: It’s totally more fun to be in studio.
Starbuck: It is.
Leahy: Even if we have to race up the stairs.
Starbuck: That makes it more fun.
Leahy: So that Scooter doesn’t have dead air when he opens up the show.
Scooter: There will be something on the air. I don’t necessarily want to know me, but there will be something. (Leahy laughs)
Starbuck: Well, tell me it’s not memorable. We’ll never forget the first time I was in studio.
Leahy: We will remember that. So Robby Starbuck, you have announced that you’re running for Congress in the Fifth Congressional District. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Starbuck: So if you don’t know me already, I started out sort of making my name in Hollywood as a director, producer. I directed and produced some of the biggest stars. Oscar-winning actors, actresses.
Leahy: See that’s kind of cool, right? Making a name in Hollywood?
Starbuck: Yeah. It’s not as cool as it sounds. That was where I had to make that decision to come out as a conservative. And it was a no-brainer for me because my family came from Cuba.
Leahy: Where in Cuba is your family from?
Starbuck: Ciego de Avila? It’s kind of a rural area. It’s not by the beach.
Leahy: And when did they come out of Cuba?
Starbuck: It was in the 60s. They all came at different times. So I can give you, like, one year, because the nature of it was like, say, like my grandpa. My mom came first, but my grandpa was held for a few years.
And the State Department had to get him out. So it was all in different stages, and some of my family members never got to leave. Some of them have died in Cuba, and some of them are still stuck there.
Leahy: Now, did your father come from Cuba?
Starbuck: No. My dad didn’t come from Cuba.
Leahy: Where’s your dad from?
Starbuck: I think he was born in Oklahoma.
Leahy: So your mom came here in the 60s? Where did she live when she first came here?
Starbuck: Florida. So my family started over completely. I mean, they lost everything. Even my great-grandpa started over as a janitor working two jobs.
Leahy: So they came with nothing. They had assets in Cuba.
Starbuck: They had their home stolen, their car stolen, every possession they had. I mean, for people that don’t know the history of Cuba, I mean, they took everything at gunpoint, and that’s it. You get to come with your shirt on your back. There was a legal process for it. They follow that process.
Leahy: A legal process for stealing your property.
Starbuck: Exactly. A legal process for stealing your property and then kicking you out basically.
Leahy: That could never happen here.
Starbuck: Oh, yeah. You know what? That’s the reason why I came out because I saw that there were all these steps that my grandparents, my mom had warned me about my entire life, about how this happened. How did we get to that place?
Leahy: How old was your mom when she came here?
Starbuck: She was 17.
Leahy: In 1962.
Starbuck: It was like 60, 63, 64.
Leahy: That was after the revolution. So she was probably 13 during the revolution. 59, 60.
Starbuck: And so for them, it was one of those things where they were far enough away, where nobody had really pushed up on them. And I think this is one of the things people can kind of relate to now is if you feel like it’s not at your front doorstep yet and you see the stuff happening right now in society.
Leahy: First they came for the. Then they came for the. Then they came from you.
Starbuck: One of the biggest regrets you’ll hear from Venezuelans and Cubans is that not enough people stood up. They kept waiting, thinking it’s not going to hit my doorstep.
Leahy: And then it did.
Starbuck: And then it did.
Leahy: Venezuela. I’ve been to Venezuela before.
Starbuck: It was awful.
Leahy: It was a great, beautiful place way back. Way back in 1972, 73. I guess it was a long time ago. You weren’t even born then. (Laughs) So where did your mom and dad meet?
Starbuck: They met in California. So part of my family still lives in Florida, part in Cuba and then part in California. So my mom and her great grandparents, I’m sorry. Her grandparents, my great grandparents, and her parents moved to California to start over there because one of them had gotten a job there. She met him I want to say, is West Covina was where they met.
Leahy: Southern California. And now what did your mom and her parents do for a living in California?
Starbuck: My grandpa ended up doing insurance. Super exciting. He was in insurance sales.
Leahy: We have a lot of insurance people listening to us.
Starbuck: I was being serious. It is super exciting. I mean, the stories that he has about his time and insurance is actually some exciting about that. For instance, a lot of people don’t know there are tornadoes in California. That was something that most people have no idea about. But there are tornadoes.
Leahy: I didn’t know that.
Starbuck: And so there’s a certain amount of tornado damage every year. I always found that interesting. So he got a job in insurance.
Leahy: What did your mom do? Did she go to college?
Starbuck: She was in real estate. Was actually the first person to go to college.
Leahy: So your mom’s in real estate and your dad in a meet and West Covina? And they get married. Where did you grow up? I grew up partially in Temecula. So my childhood is a little interesting. I graduated at 16.
Leahy: From high school.
Starbuck: So I actually left home and had simultaneously finished my first year of College in a gifted program in California.
Leahy: Are you gifted Robby?
Starbuck: Here’s what’s interesting about that program.
Leahy: We have a gifted person in here.
Starbuck: What’s really interesting about it is that the program is now being trashed in California because they say that program is a racist because there are too many Asians in the program.
Leahy: And so your mom is Cuban. And that program, from what you graduated, is now being trashed as racist.
Starbuck: It’s being trashed as racist. And another kid, let’s say, who has sort of accelerated learning and is ready to move ahead faster, won’t be able to anymore. They’re gonna be pushed back.
Leahy: They got to move it back. Dumb it down right?
Starbuck: I mean, I thought we were supposed to celebrate exceptionalism and like wanting to push ahead.
Leahy: America traditionally celebrates exceptionalism.
Starbuck: We should. We always should.
Leahy: I don’t know what this thing is we’re in right now.
Starbuck: It’s definitely not that. It’s the antithesis of it. So I left at 16 and essentially started my life.
Leahy: So let’s go back. What did your dad do for a living? He was also real estate.
Leahy: Real estate. And so you grew up in which said you grew up in?
Starbuck: Temecula was the initial place.
Leahy: And Temecula is where in Southern California?
Starbuck: It’s kind of about an hour, 15 minutes north of San Diego.
Leahy: So is it Orange County?
Starbuck: No, not Orange County. No, it’s Riverside County.
Leahy: Riverside County. A little deserty?
Starbuck: It’s bigger now. There’s an Indian casino there.
Leahy: Where was the special program?
Starbuck: It was all over the state of California so you could qualify for it.
Leahy: You graduate from high school at 16 Temecula, and you’ve got your first year of college. What happens then?
Starbuck: I went to work while doing college for a guy named Brad Greenspan. He started a site called MySpace.
Leahy: So you were working for MySpace.
Starbuck: Not only that, but he had a website called Live Video. It was the first video streaming website on the Internet. And everybody thought this was a crazy idea.
Leahy: So you were going to college where I was going at the time.
Starbuck: I ended up switching to Saddleback, which was a college where I was able to work and then go to school.
Leahy: Where did you start?
Starbuck: Saddleback, Orange County. And I was able to work there like it was my work.
Leahy: So you were in Orange County working for the MySpace folks, working for Brad. And he had a couple of different websites. So did you work just for MySpace or for other websites,
Starbuck: It was a whole company. A bunch of different things. So we produced original content, original shows.
Leahy: I mean, when you say you work for him, did you write code?
Starbuck: No, I was producing shows.
Leahy: How old are you?
Starbuck: 16. So how do you monetize all this stuff on the Internet?
Leahy: How do you connect with Brad.
Starbuck: Through a recruiter. Actually, a guy named Trent, who I’m still really good friends with today, who I flipped from being a Bernie Bro to being a Trump voter. He was my recruiter. He recruited me there.
Leahy: How did you connect with this guy?
Starbuck: He found me. Honestly, I’ve never asked him how he found me, but he found me.
Leahy: Had you done some video stuff?
Starbuck: I had done some video stuff, and I had sort of large social media already then. And I think that’s how he found me. That’d be my guess. That was my assumption.
Leahy: Was there a MySpace office or did you work out of your house?
Starbuck: There were multiple. So there was an office for E Universe, which was the parent company. And then you could work from home, work from the studio if you were shooting stuff. It was very free.
Leahy: Where was the universe located?
Starbuck: There was an office in LA. and then there was a satellite office in Orange County.
Leahy: Did you work in the satellite office?
Starbuck: I did both. It was depending on what we were doing.
Leahy: How old were you when you did this?
Starbuck: 16.
Leahy: Are you thinking, how did this happen?
Starbuck: Not really.
Leahy: Was it because you were gifted? (Laughs)
Starbuck: No. You’re never going to forget that.
Leahy: Yes. Every time we introduce you, ladies and gentlemen, the gifted Robby Starbuck. (Laughs)
Starbuck: No, no, actually, I wish they had a different word for those programs.
Leahy: I’m just teasing.
Starbuck: No, I know. It was really funny the first time I met with Brad was like, look, the weird thing for me here is like, don’t talk about your age with people because they’re gonna feel really weird answering to a 16-year-old. So you just look young. It was like this thing at work that you just didn’t talk about.
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.
Photo “Robby Starbuck” by Robby Starbuck.
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 GOP candidate for Nashville’s Fifth District, Robby Starbuck in studio to talk about growing up in a Cuban family and working hard for a future in America.
Leahy: In studio Robby Starbuck, a candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress in the Fifth Congressional District currently represented by Jim Cooper, the brother of the tinpot dictator known as Mayor John Cooper. Those are my words, not Robby’s.
(Starbuck chuckles) Robby, yesterday you had a big YouTube video announcement. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has endorsed you in glowing terms. You put a YouTube out for that. Tell us about how he came to endorse you and what impact that YouTube videos had so far.
Starbuck: First of all, is there a better endorsement than Rand Paul right now? He’s been right at every step of everything that happened throughout COVID. Like, no question. All along the way, the media says he’s crazy.
And then three months later, he’s proven right every single step of the way. There’s been no bigger advocate of freedom. But this came to be because I made friends with him and his wife a couple of years ago through social media.
Leahy: Through social media?
Starbuck: Yes. We started a relationship through social media.
Leahy: How does that happen with the United States senator?
Starbuck: I have sort of a larger social media accountant.
Leahy: How large is it?
Starbuck: Before the great purge of the election. It was 250,000.
Leahy: That’s pretty good.
Starbuck: And then on YouTube, we’ve got it. I don’t know the exact number. It’s like, 140,000.
Leahy: Is YouTube still allowing you to be on.
Starbuck: So that’s a really funny question. Yes, we have our YouTube account. But our numbers changed this summer. (Leahy chuckles) I made a joke about the fact that I had more subscribers than Joe Biden did.
Leahy: Oh boy are you in trouble.
Starbuck: And literally, I did this whole thing about that. Right afterward, we get a report. There’s a thing called Social Blade that tells you how your metrics and analytics are going. And literally, the next month, we had negative views. (Leahy laughs) Negative 100,000 views.
Leahy: Gee, how did that happen.
Starbuck: No idea. So I send it to our person at YouTube. And he was like, I’ve never seen this before. The loan Republican at YouTube. There is one.
Leahy: Don’t out that person.
Starbuck: No, I’m not outing that. But there’s one. There’s one.
Leahy: There the one Republican at YouTube.
Starbuck: So I made friends with him over social media and with his wife. And we had them on my podcast. My wife and I did a podcast together. And so I was a big promoter of their book, The Case Against Socialism because it’s one of those books that I wish was in every school that every kid would read because we don’t educate kids anymore on the history of socialism and communism.
Leahy: Let me just interrupt for a moment. I’ll invite you to attend the National Constitution Bee that we sponsor every year. I don’t know if you know about that.
Starbuck: I’m in. Yes, I’ve heard about it.
Leahy: And we’ve got a book. We’ll give it to you, but you’re welcome to come. And we give educational scholarships to kids that actually study the Constitution. And back to your point.
Starbuck: You’ll love this then. My daughter this year memorized the Constitution. My oldest.
Leahy: How old is she?
Starbuck: She’s 12 so she did it for a speech meet.
Leahy: We’ve had a couple of 12-year-olds participate in this, so if she wants to come she can participate.
Starbuck: She would love it.
Leahy: I will tell you to get public school teachers to actually promote this, it’s like pulling teeth. We’ve got a few. We’ve got a few out there in a couple of counties. But most public school teachers, because it’s the Constitution of the United States verbatim apparently don’t seem to have much interest in that.
Starbuck: Yeah, that seems like something not super popular in public schools right now. They prefer things that are not based on reality.
Leahy: Critical Race Theory. Black Lives Matter.
Starbuck: Exactly.
Leahy: That’s what they want to promote. 1619 Project. All historical falsehoods.
Starbuck: Exactly.
Leahy: What’s wrong with that picture?
Starbuck: This idea, I think the most dangerous thing about it is the idea that you’re born either a victim or an oppressor, and that’s at the core of Critical Race Theory.
Leahy: What are you, Robby? Are you a victim?
Starbuck: Well, see, that’s the thing is, I’m kind of in the middle, aren’t I? So you can’t really nail it down. I guess I could say I’m the child of a penniless refugee, and I have every reason not to succeed in America.
Leahy: You are a victim.
Starbuck: You can go that route. because And this is actually an argument I’ve made to people as I go. Listen, when I was a kid, I was told every step of the way by my grandparents and my mom that I can do anything. This is America. It’s full of opportunity.
You don’t do what you want to do. That’s your fault. You did something wrong. You work your tail off, you will get what you want. That is why I graduated at 16. If I had been told in school by the people that I was told I needed to trust, by my teachers that I was oppressed and I was somehow a victim, my life story would look very different.
And that’s a scary thing to think about. How many kids with amazing potential are we holding back by telling them you’re automatically a victim and all these people hate you? Its disgusting.
Leahy: And your personal circumstances I think you said your mom was a refugee from Cuba. Your dad was from Oklahoma, but he sort of been in and out of your life.
Starbuck: Yeah. He’s been sort of in and out. It’s one of those things where you could say you had a rough childhood, but I was so lucky to have my grandparents.
Leahy: Your grandparents were key, weren’t they?
Starbuck: They were especially my great-grandpa. My great-grandpa was really like a father to me. He taught me everything I know about life.
Leahy: What did he tell you about jobs?
Starbuck: And he said, you never let go of a good job or a good woman. And that’s why I married young.
Leahy: That’s a good line.
Starbuck: I married at 18, and I never let her go. So it was the best advice I’ve ever been given I think.
Listen to the third 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.
