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 Battered Republican Syndrome and the constant false information given out by the Biden administration.
Leahy: In our previous segment, you found my concept that part of the problem with the operation of the Senate dealing with Joe Biden is that a number of senators there suffered from the Battered Republican Syndrome. You found that both amusing and perhaps a little bit accurate.
Carmichael: Not just a little accurate, I think it’s a lot accurate. My mother, who’s a very, very accomplished woman, but she used to say, even if you can’t succeed, you have to try. You just must try.
Leahy: I think I would like to meet your mother.
Carmichael: She’s 93 now.
Leahy: I’ll meet her someday.
Carmichael: It would be fairly soon. (Leahy laughs) She used to say, we have to try. And I think that that is what the Republicans who say, I don’t care whether or not we can get a deal or not.
I’ve got to try. I just have to. It’s kind of like, well, I don’t care if Lucy moves the football. I’m trying Charlie Brown, I have to try to kick it.
Leahy: Even though Charlie Brown knows with 100 percent certainty Lucy is going to move that football. (Laughs)
Carmichael: But he still has to try. He still has to try. There are very few Democrats, very few Democrats who will try to negotiate with a Republican president. Very few.
Leahy: In good faith.
Carmichael: In good faith.
Leahy: That’s the key.
Carmichael: Did any Democrats try to negotiate with Trump?
Leahy: I don’t think so.
Carmichael: I don’t think so. But I mean, on anything. And Pelosi made it clear once she had control of the House that nothing was going to happen simply because Trump was president.
So then I now have the Battered Republican Syndrome, I think, is right on target, because these are people that no matter if they succeed or fail, they feel like they have to try. And so now they get up there and Lucy moves the football on them.
Joe Biden says, thanks for negotiating, we have a deal. And by the way, in order for you, in order for me to sign your deal, you’re going to have to agree to all the other things that during your negotiations, you said no to.
Leahy: Let me just say for a moment, the phrase Battered Republican Syndrome.
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: I just did a search on it. As far as I can tell, a September of 2002 by Ann Coulter in an article titled Battered Republican Syndrome. Not unique to me, perhaps somewhere in the distant past.
Carmichael: And the same thing was true when Obama was president as he would move the football And like Biden, Obama would make stuff up. Here’s the difference. Democrats say, well, Trump made stuff up. And my response to that is Trump might have made stuff up on things that didn’t matter. And I’ll accept that.
Leahy: He’s a classic salesman who exaggerated to tell a story.
Carmichael: I’ll accept that. But on his key campaign promises, the things that he campaigned on, he either did, he either accomplished or tried as hard as he could as president to accomplish those things.
Had it not been for John McCain breaking his own word with his own voters when he ran for reelection and promised his most important campaign promise when he ran for his reelection. I will vote to repeal Obamacare. That was the most important promise he made.
Leahy: A solemn promise he made to the voters.
Carmichael: It was the most important. And then when it came to the vote, he broke his word. And so what I’m saying is that Democrats come up with their so-called 10,000 lies and, of course, 9,000 of those are their lies.
But even the ones that they claim don’t matter. Obama, on the other hand, in order to pass Obamacare made a bunch of statements that were flagrantly false, and he knew them to be false.
And history now shows them to also be false. Biden does exactly the same thing, except he does it almost all the time. And so he won’t accomplish anything legislatively. But what they are doing administratively, Michael is the part that when I said earlier, as a country.
We’re not going to be able to sustain ourselves in any form that we’re familiar with as long as we’re going in the direction that we’re going in now even if legislation doesn’t pass. Biden through, the fact that he controls the attorney’s general.
The fact that he controls all of the agencies. And he controls the military and all of this woke teaching to his whole of government. He says, we’re going to use the whole of government to accomplish all these things.
A lot of really, really terrible things are happening to our society, and people who are in positions that might be able to at least slow it down are really not in positions to slow it down.
If you are a bureaucrat in Washington and you oppose the Biden agenda, you will be fired. Regardless of civil service, you will be fired and you will be canceled. And the media will then be on the side of firing of the civil servant because they have an agenda to advance.
And they’re going to advance it as much as they can. Now, can the courts slow that down? Yes. But as you saw with the cake baker, that’s why I use him as an example. On the very day that the Supreme Court ruled in the cake baker’s favor, a transgender couple went in and he’s back in court again.
That didn’t happen by coincidence. That is a plan that anybody who opposes the far-left agenda we’re going to do everything we can to make your life miserable.
Leahy: Exactly. You know, when you see something like that Crom, it strikes me that there has been a fundamental change in the American character among a portion of our populace.
Carmichael: On Monday, let’s pick up on this because I don’t think we have enough time today. But what I want to pick up on is what we talked about earlier and that is culture. I asked my friends who are for much larger amounts of immigration from the southern border.
I asked them, look, I am for legal immigration as long as it’s limited to some reasonable amount because I want people who immigrated to this country to assimilate and be part of our culture, not bring their culture and change our culture.
And I would say to them, I said, every single country south of our border purports to be a democracy. Every single one. Which one do you want us to become more like? And they’re stumped.
There is no answer. They don’t say I want to be like Mexico. Mexico has gun laws where nobody can own a gun, but their murder rate is five times more than in the U.S. What I’m saying is that as more and more people from South of our border come to our country, they’re bringing that culture here.
Leahy: I will give you an answer to your question that’s different than the usual answer, but has all sorts of problems. The answer that that one might give to that would be Costa Rica. What’s the problem with that? They have no military.
Carmichael: Is Costa Rica an island?
Leahy: No. It’s a little tiny country. It’s a tiny country in Central America. It has a tradition of democracy and freedom and good schooling, but it doesn’t have any military.
Carmichael: Here’s an assignment for us. Let’s find out what Costa Rica’s immigration policy is. Let’s find out what it is because I’ve heard wonderful things. I’ve never been to Costa Rica, but I’ve heard wonderful things about it. You’re describing a country that seems to be very orderly.
Leahy: So I have a friend, actually, who owns a place on the West Coast of Costa Rica. Well, perhaps what we ought to do, Crom, is take a road trip to Costa Rica and do a show from there. What do you think?
Carmichael: (Laughs) That sounds good.
Leahy: By the way, out there in our listening audience, I’m sure that there is some sponsor that would love to hear what’s going on in Costa Rica. (Laughs)
Carmichael: There might be somebody who actually knows the answer to the question.
Leahy: I bet someone in our listening audience goes to Costa Rica.
Carmichael: And the question is, what is Costa Rica’s immigration policy.
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 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 John Harris of the Tennessee Firearms Association to the newsmakers line to weigh in on the new gun control executive action by Joe Biden and speculates whether or no the Tennessee General Assembly will take action.
Leahy: Yesterday, President Biden made a couple of announcements. Here’s a story at The Tennessee Star. Biden announces executive actions on gun control, says changes won’t impact the Second Amendment. Really? On the newsmaker line right now is Tennessee Firearms Association President John Harris. Good morning, John.
Harris: Good morning.
Leahy: Well, President Biden on Thursday announced executive orders he’s signed on gun control, including ones to address the issue of homemade untraceable firearms known as ghost guns and strengthen so-called red flag laws that allow police or family members to ask a court to order the temporary removal of guns from a person they say, presents a danger to themselves and others. Biden says this won’t impact American rights to own guns under the Second Amendment. What say you John Harris of the Tennessee Firearms Association?
Harris: Well, Joe Biden’s got a long-standing history of deception and lying, and this is just more of it.
Leahy: When I read the Second Amendment, it says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.
Harris: Correct. It is abundantly clear there are no qualifiers on that prohibition and yet government officials, certainly at the federal level, and sadly, at the state level and commonly at the local government levels completely ignore that. They want to put a provision at the tail end of it that says, unless we find it to be politically expedient or what we define as reasonable.
Leahy: So these red flag laws that allow police or family members to ask a court to order the temporary removal of guns from a person they claim as a danger to themselves or others, I can see that being easily abused. What do you think?
Harris: It will be. That kind of law exists in some states right now. It doesn’t exist in Tennessee, although a Senate Republican in Tennessee last year tried to push it forward, and this year there are other bills like that pending. I think they’re all filed by Democrats this year. And the sad part is those bills are clearly gun control measures and get guns off the street measures.
Tennessee and other states generally have existing statutes that have been on the books for a long time that allows someone that has a mental health issue that poses a risk of injury to themselves or others, it’s called an emergency committal in Tennessee, to be judicially evaluated by doctors for purposes of seeing if there is an immediate need to get this person some diagnosis and treatment. And they can lock them up for up to two weeks in a mental health facility for diagnostic and determinations.
What these red flag laws do, however, is under the guise of safety they allow anybody without a medical opinion or diagnosis to go to a judge or magistrate to get an order not to get the person off the street and not to get the person evaluated and not to get the person some help, but to just have the police go in and seize their guns and take those items out of the house, disarming the individual and other household members.
Leahy: What is the probability that that such a red flag law would be used against lawful gun owners?
Harris: It has been. And there is a clear history based on congressional Senate testimony of numerous examples where that has been used against lawful gun owners. It’s been weaponized in domestic matters. It’s been used in petty disputes, and it happens all too frequently that many of those, in fact, because they’re done Ex parte, which means you don’t have a chance to challenge it on the front end, is often reversed by a court when they actually have a contested, evidentiary hearing.
Leahy: Now, where does this go forward? I saw that the attorney general of West Virginia, Patrick Morrisey, says, if you do this, I’m going to file a lawsuit against you. Do you suggest that our attorney general in Tennessee, Herb Slatery, that he follow the lead of Morrissey and file lawsuits against these of what I think are unconstitutional executive orders on gun control?
Harris: Absolutely. What I would actually suggest is that Tennessee get an attorney general that leads on issues like this instead of letting other attorney generals in other states be the leader. And then our guy having to be speculated about as to whether or not he would follow suit and join as opposed to lead the battle.
Leahy: Well, that’s a tall order to get a new attorney general. It is a long process to go through that. But do you see Attorney General Slatery filing the lawsuit or not?
Harris: Right now, I see, potentially because of prior experiences with him that he might join in someone else’s lawsuit. I don’t see him filing it on his own or leading with Tennessee as having the best or the strongest arguments. I see him piling as a me-too kind of participant.
Leahy: How does he go about making those decisions and what influence do the average people and state legislators have on him?
Harris: They have a lot of ability and capacity to put public pressure on him. But the state AG, operating as an attorney, exercises generally independent discretion on whether to pursue a particular lawsuit or not. And so although the General Assembly and the public can demand it, they can pass legislation enabling it.
The decision as to whether or not to weigh in and actually do it is the AG. And in fact, there have been instances in the past where the General Assembly specifically wanted the AG to weigh in on issues such as this. The AG failed to do it, and the General Assembly went out particularly, I think when Mark Green was still in the General Assembly and hired a private law firm, the Thomas Moore Center, to represent the state of Tennessee when its own AG wouldn’t.
Leahy: Do you see something like that being a possibility now or needed now on the gun control issues?
Harris: I do think on gun control issues you may see that as an alternative because we have not seen since Slatery has been in office that he’s been particularly supportive or defensive of Second Amendment rights in Tennessee.
Leahy: The Tennessee General Assembly is only going to be in session for another three weeks. Is there a time for such action to be taken?
Harris: They could pass a resolution very quickly to urge that action be taken. But frankly, they’ve known it’s been coming since last fall when the Biden-Harris administration became the president-elect, so to speak. And yet they’ve done nothing during this legislative session of any significance to prepare for the inevitable. So they don’t get a pass on this as if it suddenly struck them out of the blue.
Leahy: Do you plan on contacting members of the Tennessee General Assembly to pass such a resolution?
Harris: We actually wrote legislation and submitted it to a number of legislators back as early as December on this issue to improve Tennessee’s laws and to put a provision in Tennessee law that would have required the Attorney General to go forward with protected Tennessee rights. And the legislators that we submitted it to didn’t even file it as a bill.
Leahy: Why is that?
Harris: Not sure. I don’t know if they were getting pressured down by the leadership. If they were getting opposition from the governor. I know there are two bills pending now, and we’ve offered that legislation as amendments on those bills. And those two bill sponsors have indicated that they’re not even planning to put the amendment on the bill.
Leahy: Do you think any current members of the Tennessee General Assembly would be open to the idea of a resolution requesting that the Attorney General file suit against President Biden’s executive orders?
Harris: Oh, absolutely. I think there are legislators like Bruce Griffey that you mentioned a little bit ago that have the spine that would stand up and demand that we at least do resolutions and proclamations and other types of encouragement for that action. I think also, as Speaker Sexton has said, there’s a whole lot of Republicans in that General Assembly that don’t have the willingness to defend our Second Amendment rights and that’s why we took a partial step on the governor’s bill rather than a full step towards constitutional.
Leahy: Last question. Will you be presenting a draft resolution for, I don’t know, Representative Griffey or others to consider introducing in the next couple of weeks?
Harris: We may do that but we have not drafted one at this point.
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.
