Neil W. McCabe: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Is on Record Saying He Would Sign a Bill Banning Abortions After the 6th Week of Pregnancy

Neil W. McCabe: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Is on Record Saying He Would Sign a Bill Banning Abortions After the 6th Week of Pregnancy

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 top gov tracker for One America News, Neil W. McCabe to the newsmaker line to comment on the recent speech made by Governor Ron DeSantis at the Reagan Library and what it means for his presidential candidacy.

Leahy: On the newspaper line right now top gov tracker, our very good friend, Neil W. McCabe. Neil, welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.

McCabe: Very good to be with you guys. Good morning.

Leahy: I understand you may have been traveling a little bit with top gov Ron DeSantis. Is it true that he went out to the Reagan Center and gave a speech?

McCabe: Yes, he did. He made a boss performance at the Reagan Library. And it’s not so much what he said, he basically said he’s had this sort of ongoing, how radio DJs would have this for the morning DJ and the afternoon DJ would have this feud.

That’s what he has going on with Governor Newsom of California. (Leahy laughs) So he put some logs on the fire there. What was really important was that he got the prompter guardian of the Reagan legacy, in which the Reagan people control the Reagan Foundation and then the archives run the library itself.

Just the fact that he got invited to the Reagan Library puts a presidential stamp on him, certainly with the Air Force One that’s right there in the museum of the Reagan Library. It was very much a presidential appearance forum.

Leahy: So the Reagan library is in Simi Valley, California. It’s in Southern California. Were you there in person or did you cover this on video?

McCabe: I covered it remotely. I put in a request to fly out there, but I think where our One American News mothership that is in San Diego, I think their attitude was pretty much, we’ll send somebody up from San Diego. We might send somebody local rather than drop a few grand on your little John.

Leahy: (Chuckles) Does DeSantis have an Air Force Florida One? Does he just fly commercial?

McCabe: The governor does have a jet. He’s used it to go outside the state like when he went to visit the border and things. And of course, he jets all over the state of Florida. And to be fair, it’s a big state, right? It’s not like Delaware. It’s a big state.

Leahy: Or you can walk around Delaware.

McCabe: Exactly. Yes, you can walk, you can drive through. It just costs you $25 a toll. I think that DeSantis probably maybe got a ride with a donor. Who knows.

Leahy: So his book is out. He hasn’t announced yet. I don’t think he can announce until I think there’s a little bit of legislation that has to be passed.

McCabe: There’s a law.

Leahy: Tell us about that.

McCabe: He has to resign if he runs for president.

Carmichael: And they’re changing that law. Yes.?

McCabe: They’re gonna try to and he won’t comment. Whatever they want to do, they want to do. Obviously, he wants that law to change pretty quickly. What’s absolutely delicious is that the Republican leaders of the legislature put incredible pressure on lawmakers not to file a pro-life bill this session, which opened yesterday and goes on for the next two months.

Any bill to be considered had to be filed before the session began. It begins with the governor’s state of the state address. And so minutes before the governor gave his address, which of course is the deadline, two guys filed a six-week ban on abortion or a heartbeat bill and no one saw it coming.

And it was completely stealthy. Now the governor is on record at a press conference saying that he would sign a six-week heartbeat bill. And I’m proud to say that I’m the knucklehead who asked the governor that question. And that’s the tape that’s running all over the place when people say, hey, it’s gonna pass.

And so the question now is, does the governor push for this thing or not? If the six-week bill doesn’t pass, the governor has a difficult time explaining how it doesn’t pass. If he said he’d sign it, if he said he’s a pro-life governor, everything else he wants he gets.

Because the whole reason why we want DeSantis and not someone else is that DeSantis wins and because DeSantis gets things done. And so if he couldn’t get this done, I think it’s a chink in the ammo.

Carmichael: What’s the current law on abortion in Florida?

McCabe: It’s 15 weeks now. And that’s pretty much the limit. That’s the big-time Republican donors will go to 15 weeks.

Leahy: We look at this and he is doing his book tour with The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival. We expect probably he’ll announce in June.

Carmichael: Neil, I’m assuming that they did drop a bill that allows DeSantis to be governor and run at the same time?

McCabe: Correct.

Carmichael: So that bill has been dropped.

McCabe: Correct.

Leahy: All the talk is, Trump-DeSantis, Trump coming up with nicknames for Meatball Ron or Ron Des Sanctimonious. Apparently, he’s got a focus group deciding what nickname he should use. There are some policy differences to think about. President Trump has made it clear that the Ukraine war is a debacle with $100 billion going there.

The Secretary of Treasury going to Ukraine, the attorney general going to Ukraine and the president going to Ukraine. None of ’em going to the East Palestine environmental debacle in Ohio. I do think though that President Trump is very clear that he wants the war in Ukraine ended. He said give me 24 hours; I’ll end it.

Is there a policy difference on Ukraine between DeSantis who actually served in the military as a JAG, but still he served in the military and Trump when it comes to Ukraine?

McCabe: Yes, he served as a JAG, and he was in Iraq during the surge. And Iraq, whether you were a lawyer or a clerk or kicking down doors, Iraq, especially during that time, was a very easy place to get killed if you weren’t paying attention.

Leahy: And by the way, let us say Sergeant Neil W. McCabe received a bronze star for his service to the United States of America in the Army in Iraq. I just wanted to point that out, Sergeant McCabe.

McCabe: I was there two years later, and even then, it was a very easy place to get killed if you weren’t paying attention. And frankly when people jack things up, and people don’t have their equipment straight, sometimes in the back of my head, I’m thinking are you trying to get me killed? Which is a reaction normal civilians don’t have.

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 “Ron DeSantis” by Ron DeSantis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crom Carmichael on ‘Lightweight’ George Will and the Lack of True Statesmen Across the Country

Crom Carmichael on ‘Lightweight’ George Will and the Lack of True Statesmen Across the Country

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 the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael in studio to criticize American libertarian-conservative political commentator and author George Will and the lack of true statesmen across the country.

Leahy: Crom, you’ve got a bone to pick with George Will?

Carmichael: It’s not so much a bone to pick, because this is Barton Swaim who is writing an article about George Will and talking about how George Will has been this stalwart over the years for limited government. I see George Will as an advocate for political failure.

That’s the way that I’ve always viewed George Will when he decided to resign from the Republican Party because of Trump. If you’ll recall, George Will was a big George Bush the second supporter. He liked them both, and they both spent money like I’m not going to say like Democrats, but they both spent money.

George W. Bush expanded Medicare dramatically. He was quoted as saying, we have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move. If that statement is true, then that means that there is no limit as to how much government would spend or waste in order to help a single person.

Leahy: A lot of people hurt.

Carmichael: A lot of people hurt.

Leahy: They hurt during the era of the founding of the country, and the government didn’t always jump in and fix their hurt.

Carmichael: No. The point is, there will always be people who are hurting. And so if the federal government is looked upon as both the repair of hurt, of first and last resort, then slowing government spending, keeping us from going, by the way, giant deficits cause more people to hurt. It’s self-inflicted. That quote was by George W. Bush in 2003 shortly before signing a law to expand Medicare.

Leahy: This was five years before he announced that he was breaking the laws of the free market in order to save the free market. Remember that?

Carmichael: Is that George W. Bush?

Leahy: George W.

Carmichael: But George Will historically stood at the center of cutting back on entitlements, which is politically a political loser if you recognize that what motivates the left is the power and money that comes from government. George Will, intellectually, he’s actually a lightweight. His time has come and gone.

Leahy: His time has come and gone.

Carmichael: And I’m not sure his time ever came, but it’s gone.

Leahy: That’s a good point, because he was a big opponent of Ronald Reagan in the early days. When Reagan was running against George W. Bush.

Carmichael: I have no idea. If George Will could do whatever he wanted to do I have no idea what George Will would want to do. He’s a lightweight. He comes across as serious, but he’s always been kind of a lightweight.

Michael, I’m not sure that when it comes to true statesmen, they are few and far between. When I look across the world, I don’t see anyone who stands out as a great statesperson in any of our major institutions.

Leahy: Our major institutions have gone into a world where they accept certain propaganda, right, shall we say? They’re not particularly intellectually honest. In fact, they’re the exact opposite of intellectually honest.

Carmichael: And part of the problem is that you have people like The Wall Street Journal opinion page that became so angry and upset with Donald Trump’s victory. Donald Trump has many shortcomings, but the shortcomings have more to do with his persona than they do with his policy.

Leahy: Let me follow up on this Crom. It’s very interesting that you mentioned that, because there is of course, I don’t know if the country wants to see a rematch of 70, then it’ll be 78-year-old Donald Trump against 82-year-old Joe Biden. I don’t think the country necessarily is looking forward to that.

But the ABC- Washington Post poll came out, and despite all of the missteps that Donald J. Trump has had since he left the presidency, the latest poll has him up 48-45 over Joe Biden. On the big issues of foreign policy, who would you rather have? Donald J. Trump or Joe ‘Surrender’ Biden?

Carmichael: I said that Trump’s policies were good. His personal way of handling himself leaves a great deal to be desired, and I think it actually hurt his ability to accomplish things. Now, having said that, there’s a lot between here and here in the next election.

Leahy: There is an awful lot between here and the next election.

Carmichael: And I think that we are going to find out from Biden sometime by the middle of March through the end of March at the latest, whether or not he intends to run for re-election.

Leahy: By the way, we could roll tape on this Crom. But I think someone in this studio made a prediction.

Carmichael: Yes. That he wouldn’t serve out his term.

Leahy: Someone made that prediction.

Carmichael: I think that probably was me.

Leahy: I think it probably was.

Carmichael: My prediction is he’d be gone by now.

Leahy: I think your prediction was he’d be gone by April.

Carmichael: Well, I think he’ll be gone. (Leahy laughs) That would be then one of those predictions that turns out to be incorrect.

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 “George Will” by Washington Speakers Bureau. Background “United States Capitol” by David Maiolo. CC BY-SA 3.0.