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 Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs to the newsmaker line to discuss his recent letter to President Joe Biden in response to the vaccine mandates that infringe on American’s freedom and liberty.
Leahy: We are joined now by the Mayor of Knox County, our very good friend, Glenn Jacobs, who broke some news on Thursday with us at The Tennessee Star. Headline. Knox County will not Comply with Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Mandate. Welcome to The Tennessee Star Report Mayor Jacobs.
Jacobs: Morning, Michael. Thanks for having me on.
Leahy: We always are glad to have you on here. You are always interesting, entertaining, and a supporter of liberty, which we love here on The Tennessee Star Report. So tell us what you told President Biden and what’s happened since you put that out.
Jacobs: Sure. Well, first of all, it’s ironic because this morning I’m actually on my way to read to an elementary school about the United States Constitution. I’m wondering if President Biden is going to be there because he can certainly use a primer himself. (Leahy laughs)
I understand he’s vacationing at the beach in Delaware, so probably not. But last week I read a letter to President Biden about his vaccine mandate that he was implementing through an emergency rule with OSHA and the Department of Labor.
I feel many other folks do as well that something of this magnitude impacts so many people, this is not just like saying, hey, your toilet can only use so much water or some of the other kind of ludicrous things that the federal government does.
This is a big deal. And it’s going to impact tens of millions of people. And I believe that it requires literally an act of Congress. It should have been a legislative action instead of the President just signing a decree and making it the law of land. And like many other folks, I have a lot of issues with that.
I also have issues with the President saying this is not about freedom. It’s always about freedom in the United States. He took an oath to uphold the Constitution just like I did that is what the Constitution is therefore really. To protect the Liberty of the American people. And it just really bothers me when politicians forget about that.
Leahy: Yes. And in your letter, you were direct and you said this. You said finally, as an American, I’m appalled President Biden by your statement, ‘this is not about freedom or personal choice.’ On the contrary, you Glenn Jacobs, Mayor of Knox County write, in America, it is always about freedom. I like that line.
Jacobs: Thank you. But, I mean, it is and that’s what separates us from the rest of the world. We’re a nation founded on the idea that individuals have God-given rights. The government’s job is first and foremost to protect those God-given rights, not to trample all over them.
And we have processes in place that are designed to make that happen. The whole idea is that we give up a little bit of our freedom and our liberty in order for the government to have laws that can make society work in civilization work. That’s government’s primary job.
And that’s certainly the federal government’s primary job. It’s not to micromanage our lives. And President Biden might think it’s a good idea and thinks that everybody should get vaccinated.
And this is not about the vaccine either. I think the vaccine, there’s a lot of benefits to it. I really do. This is about the process. This is about the President of the United States usurping congressional power.
Usurping legislative power. If the President does that, if the executive takes on legislative power, he’s no longer President. He’s a King. And we’re not living in a Republic, we’re living in a Kingdom.
Leahy: Yes. And not a good King. A bad King. You close your letter, Glenn Jacobs, to President Biden. You say the following, ‘In Knox County, we know what we stand for. We stand for freedom.
We stand for the rule of law, we stand for the Constitution. And you, Mr. President, can rest assured that we will stand against your blatant and egregious executive overreach.’ What has the President said in response to that letter?
Jacobs: (Laughs) The President hasn’t said anything. I don’t know if he’ll actually read it. We did send him a hard copy. We also sent it to the Department of Intergovernmental Affairs. I’ll share something else with you, Michael.
When President Trump was President, even though the President didn’t speak directly to the counties, there was a lot of communication with the counties. We actually went up to Washington, D.C., and met the folks at the Department of Intergovernmental Affairs.
The day that we were there, the Secretary of Agriculture spoke. This was county executives, staff, and commissioners from three states in the Southeast. And we were all invited to Washington and see kind of how things work up there.
And there were constant updates from the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs specifically to my office. I’ve heard nothing from the Biden administration. I don’t know what other county mayors and county executives are seeing, but President Trump, for all the criticism that he got from a lot of people one of his initiatives was to have communications with the counties, because in the end, the counties and the cities, you know we are the ones on the front lines in many cases.
And President Trump was very good about that. President Biden has done nothing in his administration that I know of up to this point. But he hasn’t said anything. Of course, there’s been a lot of reactions, both positive and negative from other people.
Leahy: Tell me about some of the negative reactions to this letter from other people.
Jacobs: Of course it’s simple partisanship at this point, and that’s the problem overall now, with where this country is going. COVID-19 is a public health crisis, but it’s morphed into a political issue as well. It’s been completely politicized.
And I can literally tell you, based on a comment that someone leaves on social media, I can tell you what their profile is going to look like. I can tell you if they’re Democrats or Republicans. I can tell you if they’re liberal or conservative, and it’s no longer about thinking about ideas.
What’s really scary is no matter where you are in the political spectrum, the idea that the President is just making laws on his own should really bother everyone. I don’t care if you are liberal or conservative.
It doesn’t matter that that’s not how this country works. But it’s all based on partisanship. Joe Biden did this, that’s good. Donald Trump did this, that’s bad. And that’s how people think. And that’s a horrible place for this country to be. But unfortunately, that’s where we’re at.
Leahy: You said something very interesting that the Biden administration is not communicating with your county at all and that the Trump administration was communicating with you frequently.
This is a theme that we’re seeing about the Biden administration. I call it the ‘Biden Bigfooting’ problem. They basically are bigfooting everybody’s counties and state governments that don’t agree with them. Foreign countries like France.
This is very troubling to me and I think this is an indication that the Biden administration doesn’t care and is attempting to exercise absolute power over everyone else. What are your thoughts?
Jacobs: I do not disagree with you. I think for the Biden administration, everything’s political. I think this vaccine mandate was actually designed to get other things off the front page. Look at the debacle in Afghanistan.
We look at the crisis on the border. The FAA just ordered no drone flights over the Southern border in places so that the news can’t get up there and see what’s going on. I absolutely don’t disagree with you at all.
I think that there’s a lot of politics at work, and I think it’s very strong arm, too. I think that it is. And then, of course, we’ve also heard now that it’s becoming harder to get the monoclonal antibody therapy, which I’m not a doctor, but I think that’s a great treatment for COVID-19. And I think that’s something that should be readily available and that’s becoming harder to get.
Leahy: Particularly in red states.
Jacobs: Exactly. It seems to me that there’s a lot of strong-arm politicking going on. If you don’t like what the administration is doing, they shut you down. Of course, we see this on social media as well, not from them, but from the kind of gatekeepers of social media. There’s no free discourse anymore. If they don’t like what you’re saying, they shut you down. But I agree with you on that.
Leahy: You told us you were literally in the car on the way to meet with some elementary school kids to talk about the Constitution?
Jacobs: Yes, sir. Of course last Friday, September 17 is Constitution Day. The constitution and was signed on September 17, 1787. I’m on my way over to talk to some young people about the Constitution.
And I believe that that’s what makes America an exceptional country is the idea that we have a government that’s there to protect our rights as opposed to one that uses us as a resource.
Leahy: Always entertaining, always enlightening. Thanks so much for joining us today. Come back again soon, if you would, please.
Jacobs: Yes, I sure will. Thank you so much.
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.
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. – guest hosts Henry and Cunningham discuss big government and the role it plays in individuals lives.
Henry: My name is Grant Henry. I’m a grassroots engagement director with a group called Americans for Prosperity here in Tennessee. And Michael Patrick Leahy has been kind enough to ask me and this comparable Ben Cunningham to come in and do some co-hosting for him this morning.
I guess he’s spreading his empire across the vast reaches of America here. He seems like he’s opening up a new spot in a new state every single day.
Cunningham: He is. It’s a great service to Tennessee, service to the country because we just don’t have that many conservative news outlets these days. I don’t know if you follow Project Veritas with James O’Keefe who comes out with these corrections.
I forget what he calls them. But each time he forces somebody to make a correction. And these are all mainstream media like CNN, those kind of guys. He does this cute sarcastic video about how they’ve had to correct their news account of Project Veritas.
The point is that we just don’t have any good conservative news sites that we can follow in and know that we’re going to get a conservative voice. Which basically means a factual account of what’s going on.
And that’s why it’s so important for The Tennessee Star to be a part of it. There’s another story going around, Grant. I’m kind of going for a way later, this Gabby Petito story,
Henry: I don’t know. No, I have not even heard.
Cunnigham: This one girl and her boyfriend, I think her fiance, we’re traveling around the country and she disappeared. And it turns out that he is now back at their home in Florida and is refusing to talk about what happened to her.
And what’s fascinating to me is the way this story is kind of unfolded. And, of course, the news media loves these kinds of stories. There is a mystery. There’s a cute young couple. There’s just about everything that is interesting in a story.
But the really interesting thing to me again is how this thing is kind of unfolded. First, it seemed obvious that he was probably the prime suspect.
Then they had a police video where somebody had called the police when the couple had gotten into a fight. Not a big physical fight. And it looked like maybe from the police report that actually she was the aggressor and she was kind of beating up on him a little bit.
It’s still very difficult to know what’s going on. But they also revealed that both of them have some mental issues, some emotional issues which have factored into it. I got to thinking about this story and how similar it is to so many stories we see coming out of Washington, D.C. We’re just now getting an indictment on the Trump Russia probe.
And it takes forever to get information out of government. Thomas Massey, a great liberty-minded congressman from Kentucky, pointed out that some fact, I forget what the issue was but it had just come out of the CDC, and he was asking, why in the world has it taken so long to get this information out of government?
And the problem is as government grows and all these different agencies within the government start protecting their turf. Like the CIA and the national security agencies, it’s almost impossible to get information out of them.
And the parallels with this is Gabby Petito’s story and getting news out of our own government and how difficult it is like pulling teeth. And you talk to congressmen that say, I’m trying to get information out of one of the federal agencies, and I can’t get information.
What! This is a congressman. This is our elected representative. And these arrogant federal agencies are saying, eh, we don’t know whether we can give you the information, we don’t know whether you can be entrusted with the information.
And there’s always been a problem with the over-classification of documents. The security agencies want to classify everything because they don’t want to get anything out. It’s cover your behind basically. (Henry chuckles)
Henry: Right.
Cunningham: And as government grows bigger, it gets further and further away from the people. You get these entrenched cliques within each agency and they’re fighting with each other.
And they’re allied, for example, in the Department of Education, with the teachers unions. And you see that repeated over and over and over again. You got defense contractors that probably have more clout in the Defense Department than a lot of people at the Pentagon.
And as government gets bigger and bigger and bigger, we get smaller and smaller and smaller. And it’s just amazing how big our government is and how they treat us as outsiders.
We’re the citizens. We’re the ones that grant our power to the government, as the Constitution says. But we have gotten to the point where government is so big and so arrogant.
And the ruling class, especially the liberal elites really think the government should be the embodiment of their morality. That’s, again, the role of government that you were talking about. And it’s so important for us to come back to that basic question every time.
What is the role of government in their lives? Well, it’s certainly not to be an arrogant overseer, but that’s precisely what government has morphed into.
Henry: And I think going on that rant that you just went on there is so important on a day like today, Constitution Day. It’s so important on a day to recognize not just what the founding documents were and what it was about, but the philosophy by which it was meant to instill how we live in America.
And exactly what you just said. This inability to get information either out of D.C. or anywhere else. What’s most frustrating here also is that it seems like some of our politicians playoff that from time to time. They recognize the fact that it’s going to take months, if not years, to actually fully play out some of these stories.
Cunningham: Yes. They depend on it.
Henry: They depend on it. And by the time some of these stories come to fruition, we’ve all forgotten about it. Nobody really cares anymore. The gusto is gone. The real interest behind what the initial impetus for that story was, what do I care anymore?
My guy’s not even there now. But it goes back to what is the role of government in your life and how localized should we be? I’ve heard this phrase before. I’m a Nashvillian first, a Tennesseean second, and a United States citizen third.
And I think the concept there is the play in America was always meant to be that we have super federalism in itself which is a super small federal government, and the States rights are meant to make reign supreme.
Anything that’s not specifically given to the federal government by way, the numerator powers are meant to be left over for the states to control those powers. And we’ve lost sight of that entirely.
Cunningham: Lost sight is an understatement. A complete understatement. We have trampled on that concept completely and totally. And the states have given up their power in return for federal money. And we see this attempt by Tennessee to turn Medicaid into a block grant.
That’s a very small step at taking back some of the power that the federal government has taken from us. This is in terms of health care. TennCare has been a thorn in our side for decades. It was the main reason we had to push for the income tax.
The state income tax Don Sundquist, our governor back in 2000, said, threw his hands up and said I’m sorry, the budget is out of control. We simply don’t have enough money, and we got to have euphemistically they always say another revenue source. (Henry chuckles)
Henry: They always love their new revenue sources.
Cunningham: It would have changed Tennessee completely. And it’s just another indication of how much we really are just serving at the pleasure of the federal government now.
And why it is so important for that rally yesterday for legislators at the state level to say, heck, I want this power back. I don’t want you telling me, I don’t want you micromanaging me every day.
Henry: Well, that’s the idea, right? This concept, this notion that, you know best, what’s for someone else’s life is so pervasive now that it’s seeped into almost everything. There is a story coming out of The Washington Post that I just sort of went viral on Twitter last night.
Headline: Justice Thomas defends the Supreme Court’s independence and warns of destroying our institutions. That idea right there. Destroying our institutions is what I would speak about so much about losing faith in these institutions.
But Justice Thomas here was talking about defending the independence of the Supreme Court. And on Thursday, he said that he didn’t want us to destroy our institutions, and he didn’t want our institutions to basically give us what we want.
He said here, ‘That we’re not ruling based on personal preferences and suggested that the nation’s leaders should not allow others to manipulate our institutions when we don’t get the outcome we like.’
And I think it hit me there in one swoop-in when I realized that the reason why there was so much backlash on Twitter is they just didn’t believe Justice Thomas. When Justice Thomas says, look, I’m not up here to rule on how I feel based upon my bias, I’m here to read the four corners of a document.
Most often when Justice Thomas is writing an opinion just like when Scalia did, his go-to default answer was, I’m not the guy to answer this question for you. This is not my role. It’s not my capacity to tell you how to live your life.
There are clear mechanisms by which you can do this through the Constitution. Convince your fellow man that you’re right or you’re wrong, change hearts and minds, established legislation, and cement it into stone.
My role up here is not to tell you as nine unelected individuals how to live your life, what ought to be and what ought not to be. That is a philosophical concept that I think the left just doesn’t understand and reads as bias. More than we get back from this break.
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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 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 Senior Editor-At-Large at The Epoch Times Roger Simon in studio to discuss Cuba’s cries for freedom and Secretary of State Blinken’s response.
Leahy: We are joined in studio by our all-star panelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist, founder of PJ Media, my former boss at PJTV, editor and editor-at-large for The Epoch Times, Roger Simon. Good morning, Roger.
Simon: Good morning. I’m a little more awake this morning than usual. I don’t know why.
Leahy: Good. Now I have to admit to our audience, as a host, I’m falling down on my duty a little bit because I just delivered to you some stale radio-station and microwave-warmed coffee.
And I need to be delivering. I need to step up and we need to bring in. Scooter’s laughing because he knows it’s true. (Laughs) Our producer, Scooter.
Simon: It is true.
Leahy: What I need to do and I’m derelict in my duty here, Roger, because I’ve got to find a wonderful sponsor who can bring us really great coffee in the morning. So it’s on my to-do list. I promise.
Simon: I would move it up higher.
Leahy: (Laughs) That’s quite good. Roger, in the news today in Cuba, which has been under a Communist dictatorship for what, 60 years now –
Simon: 62.
Leahy: The people want freedom. They are demonstrating in the streets for freedom. What is the Biden maladministration doing about it?
Simon: Nada.
Leahy: Is that Español?
Simon: It’s a little bit of Spanish. No tiene interested. No le gusta. They don’t like it.
Leahy: What about Winken, Blinken, and Nod, the former partner there?
Simon: Antony Blinken.
Leahy: Tony Blinken.
Simon: Nodding off.
Leahy: The secretary of state of the United States. Now, what’s his big issue? It’s not freedom in Cuba.
Simon: No, it’s racism in the United States and he has gone to the UN asking them to investigate us. (Chuckles) This is the secretary of state of the United States, mind you.
Leahy: When I hear all these things, Roger, I think no, these guys didn’t really get elected. You know? Really? This kind of stuff.
Simon: They must have gotten there by a coup. (Laughs) Because how could anybody …
Leahy: Legal but not legitimate. Legal but not legitimate. That’s my mantra on these guys.
Simon: The whole thing about Cuba is you were very, very sad.
Leahy: Have you been to Cuba?
Simon: Yes. Yes.
Leahy: I’ve never been to Cuba.
Simon: As you know, shamefully I have a leftist past.
Leahy: No, no, no, Roger, that you are in the buckle of the Bible Belt and we believe in forgiveness. You are forgiven. Look at some of the great conservatives in history started out as liberal.
Simon: Ronald Reagan and Robert Conquest, my favorite.
Leahy: By the way, I did too. In 1980, I managed the reelection campaign of a Democrat running for Congress.
Simon: Uh oh.
Leahy: He won, but very shortly thereafter, I became a conservative Republican.
Simon: Well, you learned much faster than I. I’m a slow learner, but I was out in Hollywood where I was being essentially paid for keeping the other vision. Rollback to 1979. That’s the year I went to Cuba.
Leahy: So you went to Cuba in 1979.
Simon: It’s an amazing story.
Leahy: Was this during the Marielito?
Simon: No, no. I was invited as a Delgado to the first festival of a new Latin American cinema.
Leahy: Are you kidding me?
Simon: No.
Leahy: I didn’t know anything about this. Every time you come in, Roger, I learn a new, interesting fact about your fascinating, colorful past.
Simon: I’m sort of like the Woody Allen character Ziggy.
Leahy: Or a little bit like Forest Gump. Ziggy, Forest Gump at these main points in American history or world history.
Simon: Anyway, in this particular one, you couldn’t go to Cuba legally at the time. And so there were six of us on an illegal Cessna flying out of Miami.
Leahy: Is the statute of limitations expired, Roger? (Laughter)
Simon: Onboard the flight was my ex-wife and some other radicals. And one of the Hollywood 10.
Leahy: Tell everybody who the Hollywood 10 were.
Simon: Hollywood 10 were the poor souls who were supposedly irradiated out of Hollywood in the 50s for being Communist. And this one was Ring Lardner, Jr. Rather a famous guy.
Leahy: Famous writer.
Simon: His father was Ring Lardner, who was more famous. And we were all on this plane being flown by a – turned out – by a Vietnam vet who was very angry about where he was going.
He was just charted. So we’re flying over Cuba on our way in, and he just wants to turn back. And on the other hand, the flight control down on Vanity Airport, which in those days was the size of a postage stamp.
You could look down at it and there were some military vehicles and one airliner from Aeroflot.
Leahy: The Russian airline.
Simon: And it ended up that they only spoke Spanish at the airport. So I ended up talking us down.
Leahy: So you spoke Spanish?
Simon: I spoke Spanish.
Leahy: Where did you learn Spanish, by the way?
Simon: I lived in Spain for a little while.
Leahy: Again, all of these mysteries of your past that you’re unveiling to our audience.
Simon: I was trying to be an author. (Laughter) Cuba at that time was worse than now almost. It was illegal to play Afro-Cuban music.
Leahy: In Cuba?
Simon: In Cuba.
Leahy: When we come back, we’ll learn more about what happened when you landed in Cuba in 1979.
Listen to the full 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.
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 give his official comment on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recent advice for local municipalities on local COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Leahy: We welcome to our microphones in studio the mayor of Maury County – that bastion of economic freedom, that turbocharged engine of economic growth – Andy Ogles. Good morning, Andy.
Ogles: Good morning.
Leahy: You like that little phrase we came up with last time? The bastion of freedom and turbocharged engine of economic growth in Maury County. It’s fun because it’s true.
Ogles: It is true. We are firing on all cylinders and it’s a great time, really, to be in Tennessee, period, but certainly Middle Tennessee and Maury County. And I’m blessed to be mayor and just got back from the beach and tan.
Leahy: Tan, rested, and ready.
Ogles: That’s right.
Leahy: Tan, rested, and ready is the phrase. I went a couple of weeks ago. I went down the beginning of July. I went down in a similar area and was tan, rested, and ready for a while. (Laughs)
We went to Dauphin Island. If you haven’t been, it’s very quiet and just outside of Mobile and not a lot to do there, which was fantastic.
My wife and I and our kids just hung out at the beach every day and built sandcastles and big trenches in the sand and just chilled.
Leahy: That would be my favorite thing to do – is basically not a lot. Just sit and hang out at the beach and maybe walk along the beach.
The problem is I can do it for, like, about an hour, maybe two hours. And then all of a sudden I started thinking. What about X?
What about Y? What about C? I better call so and so. And then it all starts again. So I got to pace myself a little bit.
Ogles: With three kiddos on the beach, one of them always wanted to get in the water. Especially our little one. So we had a blast. Totally fun.
Leahy: Well, welcome back. You do look tan, rested, and ready. And the challenges of being the mayor of Maury County: I think you thrive on that, from what I can tell.
It’s interesting. We deal with a lot of political figures here, and I think you like to talk to people. To me, this is why my best role is being a talk radio host because we talk to people in studio.
But when you go out in Maury County, everyone has a claim on your time. Everyone. And so everyone has a right to come up and say, now, Mayor, why didn’t we do X?
Over here I’ve got a problem there. What are you going to do about it? You seem to like that.
Ogles: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the role of our elected officials is to be the advocate for our community. And that’s what I try to do, which is why I was so vocal during COVID.
I’ll have someone reach out or make a comment on social media. Maybe I’m being an advocate against or for some policy that maybe has a national or even statewide bent to it.
But what they don’t realize is that a vaccine mandate hypothetically affects us locally. And so it’s my job as mayor to be vocal and say, “hey, the constituents, my constituents here Maury County don’t want vaccine mandates.”
They don’t want mask mandates. They don’t want these shutdowns and this intrusive government that is wanting to lurch into Tennessee. And so I’ve been very vocal and try to be an advocate for everybody in Maury County.
And our businesses are booming because of it, because we are that turbocharged bastion of freedom that we’ve become known for. And our square is booming, which is fantastic.
Leahy: Now, Anthony Fauci.
Ogles: The man. (Chuckles)
Leahy: The man. This is coming in here just recently from Anthony Fauci and the Biden administration, and basically following Anthony Fauci’s comments the other day calling for more local vaccine mandates.
Local! The press secretary to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Jen Psaki, said that the Biden administration won’t issue broader federal mandates, but the Biden administration plans to support local municipalities and their efforts to regulate COVID-19 vaccine administration and distribution.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds very Orwellian to me, Andy.
Ogles: Well, that’s what’s been frustrating for me about COVID, in general, is that how quickly we as a people really started giving up our liberties and freedoms, and we became a very Orwellian society almost overnight.
And we’ve got to get back to the fundamental beliefs and individual liberty.
Leahy: Comment on Fauci who said on Sunday, “I’ve been of this opinion, and I remain of that opinion, that I do believe at the local level there should be more mandates. There really should be.”
Do you have a message in response to Anthony Fauci?
Ogles: Hell no!
Leahy: Doctor Fauci, are you listening? For your request for local mandates, we have the official quote from Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles. This quote is for you, Dr. Fauci. Hell no! (Laughter)
Ogles: He’s not a very tall fellow. I’ll pat him on the head and send him on his way.
Leahy: Hell no, Dr. Fauci. That’s Andy Ogles. I agree with that.
Listen to the second 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.
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 Grassroots Director of Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee Grant Henry to the studio to discuss his in-laws’ experience with real communism and how Americans are born with liberty and freedom in their DNA that is being diluted by left-wing government propaganda its useful idiots.
Leahy: We are joined in studio by our good friend Grant Henry, the grassroots director for Americans for Prosperity, Tennessee. Good morning, Grant.
Henry: Good morning, sir. I’m happy to be back.
Leahy: Well, the fourth of July. You take a look at this fourth of July. The public demonstration seemed to be a little different than in the past.
There was a report that several members of the US women’s National Team turned away from the American flag as a 98-year-old World War II veteran played the National anthem on his harmonica.
And then Democrat Cori Bush went out and said, America’s a terrible country on the Fourth of July. Not exactly the way I think we should celebrate the Fourth of July. Grant, how did you celebrate your Fourth of July?
Henry: Completely opposite from that. I celebrated my Fourth of July, obviously spending time with friends and family. And in particular, having a conversation with my in-laws. My wife is her entire family is from Romania.
Leahy: Romania. Formally under Communist dictatorship. What? Ceaușescu is a terrible guy who was running it while the Soviets were they were part of the Soviet block.
Henry: Yes. And to hear them discussing it is an enlightening conversation, to say the least. And I’ll say right now if you have never had the pleasure of doing so, I would strongly recommend having a conversation with anybody you know in your life that may have fled communism.
My wife’s family did. My wife was the only first person in her family born in America. The rest of them grew up under communism. They fled Communism.
Leahy: Her parents were born in Communist-controlled Romania?
Henry: Well, obviously born in Romania prior to Communist control.
Leahy: Prior to Communism.
Henry: Prior to Communist control. And then tell stories about what that overtake looks like.
Leahy: That happened from the period of 1945 post World War II.
Henry: 1947 is when it started.
Leahy: When did the communist regime end there? 1990?
Henry: ’80 something. Don’t quote me on that but around that.
Leahy: So they were there during the period of the Communist take over. What was that like for them?
Henry: They told me a story yesterday in particular which somehow stumbled across this. Obviously, we were talking about July four th what it means to be an American.
We stumbled across this conversation of a term I’m sure everybody has heard before called a useful idiot. Which is a strange thing to bring up during the July Fourth conversation.
Leahy: Well, it’s a phrase. First, I think Vladimir Lenin wrote about useful idiots and he talked about people who were well-intentioned but ill-informed, and they advanced arguments that help Communists take control of Russia.
Henry: My father-in-law, his father owned a farm, and in the community was large enough that it actually fed the rest of the community with vegetables.
Leahy: Really? That’s a pretty large farm.
Henry: It is. And unlike other farms in the area, we just feed your own family. He said, right after the Communist take over, the strangest things started happening where one day a judge came back and just happened upon his farm.
And he said, hey, listen, I was just fired yesterday. I can’t find work anywhere. Can I have work at your farm? A couple days later, a couple of weeks later, a University Professor came back. Same exact story.
I was just fired from the University, and I can’t find work anywhere. Can I work at your farm? Eventually, a high-level banker came back.
Exact same story. And he realized that across the nation, the nation’s most intelligent had been fired from their positions and replaced by people that would not ask questions.
They had been replaced by people that certainly were not qualified for those jobs, but simply followed orders. And I’m telling you, Michael, it illuminated this term useful idiot for me in a way that I had never heard before.
He followed this story by saying, listen, Grant. You see, he has a little bit of broken English, though. But he said, you see, there’s something that you Americans tend to forget.
You Americans have liberty and freedom in your DNA. You are born with it. You’re born into it. You’re all born with the will to fight for what’s right. And it caused me to think. We’re missing this message.
Leahy: Well, that DNA, each generation is being diluted. It seems to me. And intentionally being deluded by all the folks on the left who are promoting the falsehood that America is bad.
America is actually the greatest country in the world. But they are making it so that kids going to K-12 public schools feel embarrassed about their country.
Henry: And we need to tell people again, this is one of the reasons why I love working with Americans for Prosperity. We find social change entrepreneurs.
We need to pitch the message that you are not a liability that needs to be taken care of or not some type of victim that constantly needs to rely upon the government for some type of handout or hand up. You can do it on your own. You are empowered.
Listen to the full 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.
