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 the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to discuss Jon Meacham’s recent appearance on Morning Joe stating that the Republican Party was more of a threat to the US democracy than Communist China.
Leahy: Crom, I have to tell you, we saw another instance of Jon Meacham, the epitome of left-wing elitism who now lives here in Nashville. We’ve invited him into the program to discuss his views. He hasn’t returned our call.
Carmichael: I would push back on the left-wing elitism. I think he represents pretty much the thinking of the Democrat Party. I really do.
Leahy: Yeah, I think he does. He said things that are just hard to believe. He was on Scarborough yesterday. Morning, Joe, and we’ve got this little clip.
It’s a little bit of the midstream. We join Joe Scarborough. And then we have Jon Meacham’s response about the threats to America and what he sees as a threat versus what we see as a threat. Big difference. here we.
(Morning Joe clip plays)
On second-class status on the world stage. It’s what we do. We worry and are constantly thinking there’s somebody out there that’s about to overtake us. China? Yes, very strong. China powerful. But China too, as Brett Stevens correctly points out, has its challenges just as we do.
You know, when Mika was reading the summary, I kept thinking about the Republican Party and how synonymous with China. Not be reflexably partisan, but when you’re looking at a threat to American democracy and American resilience, as you’re saying, they are internal as much, if not more than external.
Leahy: So, Crom, what’s your action to that?
Carmichael: Well, it shows you the divisions that we have in the country because if Meacham thinks that the Republican Party is more like the Communist Chinese Party, then I think he has it exactly backward. But that’s why we have a division.
That’s why we have such a division. Meacham apparently, is okay with our southern border being overrun by people from literally all over the world.
Apparently, he’s perfectly fine with that. Now, let me say this. The Communist Party of China would not be fine with that. They would not be fine with it.
Leahy: In their own country.
Carmichael: In their own country, they would not be. But I think that they are actually behind the part of the global organizations that are behind bringing all these people across the border because we know that the Communist Chinese Party allows for a great deal of fentanyl to be exported from China into Mexico, where it makes its way across the border.
But I found it interesting that his comparisons and Scarborough’s comparisons about Japan. Japan is an ally. The discussions about Japan had much more to do with economics than world hegemony. Japan barely has a Navy.
Leahy: I had the same reaction because Joe Scarborough was talking about, well, back in the 1980s, everybody thought Japan was a big threat. No, not exactly the way it was.
Carmichael: Not even close.
Leahy: Exactly.
Carmichael: And Japan is an ally. It’s not nuclear power. It hardly has a Navy. Doesn’t have an Army. I don’t think it’s allowed to have an Army. If it does, it’s internal only, and it projects zero force to its neighbors.
Zero. China, on the other hand, is a regional bully. They steal our intellectual property. They insinuate themselves throughout Hollywood, throughout our political process, and throughout our universities.
So to compare China and Japan is preposterous. But that’s where we are as a country. In my opinion, the Democrat Party is the party of the preposterous.
It is. It’s unfortunate. I don’t think that most Democrats in Middle Tennessee share the view that Japan and China are somehow equal.
And then somehow the Republican Party, even the Democrats, I don’t believe in Middle Tennessee. Now Meacham we know came from New York, where he was clearly infected with an intellectual virus while he was up there, and he still has it.
And of course, he fled New York. He didn’t stay there. He should have. And then he could be reporting to us about how glorious it is in a city that is run and has been run by Democrats, especially the city council.
And it’s also kind of funny, just while we’re talking about New York for a second, apparently Eric Adams is going to be the Mayor of New York.
Apparently, he won the Democratic primary. But let me be clear, there are three campaigns up there, including his own, by the way, that had filed lawsuits over the results. Imagine that. Imagine that the Democrats were suspicious about the results in an election.
And this is the part that Meacham doesn’t apparently grasp. There’s great inequality in the way that he thinks. It’s perfectly fine for Democrats to challenge an election.
Perfectly fine. It’s not okay for Republicans to do exactly the same thing. And that’s where you get into a very dangerous area is when you have a country where, if you’re connected to one party and the government.
Remember, 94 percent of the people in Washington D.C. voted against Trump. So Washington, D.C. is the Democrat Party’s central hub.
It’s not supposed to be, but it is. And so it’s a very difficult situation. I’m not going to say it’s necessary at this point dangerous to the average American, but it has the potential of getting that way.
If we get overrun by 2 million people a year through our southern border, we will become more like the country south of our border.
That’s just a matter of logic. Now, let’s look at Mexico. For, for example, the murder rate in Mexico is five times that of the United States.
And as I’ve mentioned before, there’s one gun store in Mexico. There’s one. It is illegal for people in Mexico to own a gun. Do you think there are a lot of guns in Mexico? They’re all over the place. Who owns them?
Leahy: The criminals.
Carmichael: The criminals. And in the United States, we see all these murders now. Biden only talks about it if there’s a mass shooting.
There are hundreds of people murdered in the United States every week now.
Hundreds. But if there’s one mass shooting where six people die in one mass shooting, Biden gets out of his bed and goes and makes a speech. Kind of.
Leahy: Kind of.
Carmichael: But he’ll say something. He’ll try. He will try to say something. When hundreds of people are getting murdered a week across the country, he says nothing.
Leahy: It strikes me as how odd this entire world is right now in terms of the Democrat establishment thinking. So Jon Meacham thinks that the Republican Party and people who support it are a greater threat to American democracy than China. Just think about that.
Carmichael: That’s just crazy.
Leahy: Everyone of our listeners according to him, almost all of them would be a great threat to our democracy than China. It doesn’t make any sense.
Carmichael: No, it doesn’t make any at all.
Listen to the full 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.
Photo “Jon Meachem” by Larry D. Moore. CC BY-SA 4.0.
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 all-star panelist Clint Brewer to the studio to discuss the replacement of Liz Cheney and the mechanics of a Republican Party destiny.
(Rep. Elise Stefanik clip plays)
Leahy: And that is Elise Stefanik who is the Congresswoman representing the congressional district in far Northern New York, where I used to live as a kid. And now last week, the big news, the political news in Washington, they threw Liz Cheney out of the conference chair position.
The number three position in the House of Representatives and replaced her with Elise Stefanik. Now, I think from a messaging point of view, Stefanik is absolutely on point. And Cheney was absolutely off point. What does this mean for the Republican Party’s future, Clint?
Brewer: Well, I mean, it’s a gamble, right? You could say that about anything in politics. But for this moment in time right now, I think she’s more on message for that House caucus. And I think the move was made because the House members who always have to seek reelection every two years, I think they’re looking to talk more about Democrats going into the midterms than they are a person in their own caucus. It had to do more fundraising in taking the House back than it did anybody’s ideology.
Leahy: Liz Cheney is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney under George W. Bush. She kind of got handed that seat in Wyoming. She’s not really from Wyoming.
Brewer: I think a lot of people get handed their seats in politics. (Laughs)
Leahy: I don’t disagree.
Brewer: That’s not unusual.
Leahy: We can’t criticize her too much about that. What was her thinking to go so far in attacking President Trump, and do we counter to the leadership, why did she think that was a good idea that would have a good outcome for her?
Brewer: I’m not sure she cared. I don’t think she did it because she thought it was politically savvy or a good idea. I think she did because it was her conviction. I think she believes it, and it’s her honest viewpoint. I know that’s an outlier in politics to actually share your honest viewpoint, but I think she’s just being honest with people about what she thought because it certainly didn’t help her any. So she wasn’t doing some desire to get ahead politically. I think she’s just telling what she felt like to be the truth.
Leahy: I think her duty, though, to me, if you’re going to be the number three person in the House, you should follow the party line. I think she probably should have resigned and then criticized Trump. But then she wouldn’t have got the visibility.
Brewer: That’s the gamble. So you see Cheney on one end of it, you see Stefanik and McCarthy on the other end of it. The gamble is you’re going to double down on your position. And there’s a fight for the party right now and which way it’s going to break. The House is a what have you done for me lately environment. They got to run.
Leahy: They’re running all the time.
Brewer: They are always running. They never start running.
Leahy: My hats off to all of the Republican members of the House of Representatives serving now because it’s a very frustrating job because it’s all being run dictatorially by Nancy Pelosi. They can’t get anything accomplished.
The only thing they can really do is to try to help in a year and a half, turn the House over and get Republicans in control. I think it’s a tough job. A frustrating job.
Brewer: Look, it’s a tough job if you’re in the majority. I mean, you’re always running. I think the standard stat that’s out there is in order to get re-elected to the House, you have to raise about $10,000 a day.
Leahy: That is a miserable existence.
Brewer: Yes it is.
Leahy: It really is.
Brewer: But, I mean, look, to your point about the party, the party right now is fractured. It’s trying to decide what the long-term prospects of the Donald Trump worldview are. And I think there are some people in the party, like Cheney, who disagree with it vehemently.
I think that every day that passes that former President Trump’s out of power and I think that worldview probably has a little less impact.
Leahy: I disagree. I think it’s gotten even more. I look at the polls in terms of Republicans and his support is as high as it’s ever been. Number one. Number two. Did you notice this? He’s going to start doing his rallies again.
Brewer: I did. And it’s going to be interesting to see how they go. I think early on, they’ll go really well, I just don’t believe it’s sustainable. I mean, you saw Reverend Franklin Graham come out and say, I don’t know if he’s going to be well enough health-wise and have the energy and the vigor needed to run again.
Leahy: Really? I missed that part of it. I’ve not heard that there are any health problems.
Brewer: I mean, he’s just his age. He’s reaching into advanced age.
Leahy: He’ll be about Joe Biden’s age in 2024.
Brewer: And look at what everybody says about Biden. I mean, it’s not a dissimilar situation.
Leahy: But they are just so different in terms of energy levels, don’t you think?
Brewer: In a gentleman of that age, a couple of years can make a big difference.
Leahy: That’s absolutely true.
Brewer: From 74 on every year, you’re looking for diminished capacity. We’re witnessing it with Joe Biden. And I think the party has to decide if that’s really the direction it wants to go. I mean, you’ve got a lot of people stepping up.
We talked about it in the studio during the Georgia run-offs. You had a host of characters headed down there. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: A host of characters. I like that. The usual suspects.
Brewer: The usual traditional displaying of plumage and ceremonial dances (Leahy laughs) that go along with sidling up to running for a major political office.
Leahy: That’s very good.
Brewer: And that’s what you saw. So I think you’ve got a number of U.S. senators interested in running. I think you’ve got members of his former cabinet who are interested in running.
Leahy: Mike Pompeo.
Brewer: Pompeo. Nikki Haley.
Leahy: She kind of self-destructed back there a little bit. Didn’t she?
Brewer: I think she’s probably more attuned to Liz Cheney than she is to Donald Trump in terms of her values. I think Stefanik and McCarthy. I mean, look at McCarthy before Trump, he was just kind of a templated neocon.
Leahy: A templated neocon. That’s very good.
Brewer: He was not a Trump populist, but he got on the bandwagon, and that’s what it is. It’s a bandwagon and bandwagons run out of steam and they run out of gas. They stop eventually.
Leahy: Now you talked about governors and we have some governors coming to Nashville in a couple of weeks. The Republican Governors Association.
Brewer: Big event.
Leahy: That we’re trying to get a ticket to for interviews. The leadership now in the Republican Party of action is at the level of governors. And, of course, the number one guy people think of Ron DeSantis in Florida.
Brewer: Well, I agree. And I think DeSantis is an interesting position. A lot of the knocks on Republicans have been how we’ve comported ourselves during the pandemic, and Florida has done really well. He’s made all the right moves. He managed it very well at the state level.
Leahy: By the way, the legacy media in Florida hate his guts.
Brewer: Oh yeah.
Leahy: Totally hate him. That’s one of the reasons why we started as our seventh title at the Star News Network. We started The Florida Capital Star and getting great stories out of there. A big story today, Jeb “low energy” Bush former governor there, that guy. He has come out and criticized Governor DeSantis for his support of online gambling for the Seminole Nation.
That’s become a bill down there, sports betting. And Jeb Bush has come out vigorously opposing that. I don’t think that helps. I don’t know why Jeb is doing that. But I think it’s popular, frankly, down there. DeSantis is doing a lot of popular things.
Brewer: Well, it’s popular everywhere. Human beings like to gamble. I think that’s something you can say pretty affirmatively no matter where you are, people find a way to gamble. Is it the best thing for society? I don’t know. But not entirely. But is it something we really have a right to tell people no on? Not really. Can the government regulate it and tax it so it’s not completely destructive. I mean, there’s a role there.
Leahy: And it’s online all kinds of gambling, not just sports doing down there. Well, it’s very interesting. We’re going to try to get Governor DeSantis in studio here in the next couple of weeks. Maybe Kristi Noem and a few others.
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 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 the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to give his take on the future of the Republican Party.
(Liz Cheney clip plays)
Leahy: That’s Liz Cheney trying to explain why she’s gone anti-Trump and is parroting the lines of Nancy Pelosi. She was elected as a Republican in a state that loves Donald Trump in Wyoming.
Carmichael: Well, and also, apparently, she is completely oblivious to what the Democrats are trying to do to destroy our democracy in Washington. Apparently, she’s completely oblivious to that. Let’s assume that she believes what she’s saying. I don’t believe politically that it is sustainable in the Republican Party.
I just simply don’t. I think she thinks that the last election was a perfectly fine election and that all the mail out ballots and all of the stopping of counting of voting from midnight to 4:00 a.m. in the morning and all of the irregularities and all of the Zuckerberg drop boxes, all of those were perfectly normal.
Leahy: She obviously missed all of our reporting at The Georgia Star News, where we documented more than six months after the election that there still is no chain of custody for more than 300,000 absentee votes by mail-in ballots placed in drop boxes.
Carmichael: Right. There’s a guy named Miles Taylor. Now, I never knew who Miles Taylor was, but it turned out he’s the guy that wrote the book Anonymous.
Leahy: He’s like a very low level.
Carmichael: Low-level guy, but he was part of the internal government ‘resistance’ while he was a member of the Trump administration. Now, here’s the question to me. If you’re working in an administration and you don’t like what the administration is doing, it seems to me that you have a duty to quit.
If you want to criticize quit. But you shouldn’t be a member of the administration and trying to thwart what the administration is doing. And I’ll guarantee you that anybody in the Biden administration who’s acting like that…
Leahy: They are out.
Carmichael: They are not only out, but their lives are also ruined.
Leahy: Yeah, exactly. By the way, Crom, we just got a statement from former President Trump hot off the email presses.
Carmichael: What does it say?
Leahy: Statement by Donald Trump the 45th President of the United States. The Republicans in the House of Representatives have a great opportunity today to rid themselves of a poor leader, a major Democrat talking point, a warmonger, and a person with absolutely no personality or heart. As a representative of the great state of Wyoming, Liz Cheney is bad for our country and bad for herself. Almost everyone in the Republican Party, including 90 percent of Wyoming, looks forward to her ouster. And that includes me.
Carmichael: Well, there you go.
Leahy: But tell us what you really think, Mr. Former President. (Chuckles)
Carmichael: It’s statements like that that bother people because there’s no nuance. (Leahy chuckles) And by the way, there’s no nuance in what Liz Cheney has said. There really isn’t. You have Liz Cheney essentially calling out former President Trump, and you have Trump responding.
Leahy: Punching her right in the nose basically.
Carmichael: But she punched him in the nose too by calling him a liar. Now the Republicans in the House will determine whether or not she remains in a leadership position.
And assuming that the Republicans vote today that she does not stay in a leadership position, then it’ll be up to the voters of Wyoming to decide if she stays in Congress.
I’m betting that she doesn’t even run. I’m betting that she’s angling for a different position. Just as a House member with no committee chairmanships and no power that just doesn’t strike me as appealing to her. Plus, I don’t think she’ll win reelection. I don’t think she’ll win the primary.
Leahy: She’s got a lot of money and she loves the power just like her dad did. But I’ll tell you what I’m tempted to do, Crom.
Carmichael: What are you tempted to do? A lunch bet?
Leahy: Not a lunch bet because, you know, we’re expanding. We’re now in seven states. The Tennessee Star, and we’re in Florida. We’re in Virginia. We got The Virginia Star, The Michigan Star, the MinnesotaSun, The Ohio Star, The Georgia Star News. Now we are planning to add the Arizona Sun-Times, The Wisconsin Daily Sun, and The Texas Loan Star in the near future.
Okay, but I’m really tempted. I am tempted to open up The Wyoming Daily Star in Cheyanne just to track what ole’ Liz Cheney is up to over the next year or two. I am tempted to do that.
Carmichael: We probably could find somebody up there.
Leahy: We could find somebody.
Carmichael: Who could do that.
Leahy: In all of our states, we have reporters in those states who know the states. So if you know anybody in Wyoming who is interested in reporting, we might like to talk to them.
Carmichael: It’ll be interesting. But the future of the Republican Party had this Miles Taylor who I mentioned earlier. He was in the Trump administration and he resisted.
Leahy: He was in the Homeland Security Department as an aid, to an aid, to an aid, or something.
Carmichael: Yeah, and he was part of the resistance. So he wrote this book Anonymous, which is a really childish and cowardly way of doing things. He is now organizing a group of 100 Republicans and former members of Congress and former Bush administration people who will ceremoniously leave the party.
Now, among those people are Charlie Dent. Now, these are all people who used to be in the House who either quit or got beat. Charlie Dent, Barbara Comstock, Reid Ribble, and Mickey Edwards.
Leahy: Mickey Edwards, he’s a Democrat.
Carmichael: Is he a Democrat now?
Leahy: He’s a Democrat.
Carmichael: Okay, well, he’s already left the party. And then former governors Tom Ridge and Christie Todd.
Leahy: Oh, Tom Ridge awful. Mickey Edwards was a Republican. I stand corrected.
Carmichael: What I’m saying is these are a bunch of has-beens. They really are. They really are a bunch of has-beens and they’re going to ceremoniously leave the party going back to the 70s and what you and I think is Biden is doing a replay of the Carter years.
Leahy: Except worse.
Carmichael: Yes, I agree. There were millions of Democrats who left the Democrat Party and voted for Reagan. And so I’ll trade millions for 100. (Leahy laughs) I’ll trade out millions for 100 because Trump has inspired millions of people who previously didn’t vote at all to come out and vote and support policies that put America first.
Depending on how you want to describe it, that’s not a nationalist isolationist policy. What it is is just saying that when he’s negotiating with foreign powers, Trump always put America’s interests ahead of the interest of those that he was negotiating with. And he said I expect them to do the same thing.
Leahy: That’s the way sovereign countries should work.
Carmichael: And that’s how you end up with an agreement that is satisfactory to both parties. They may be a win-win, but at least it’s satisfactory. And one party doesn’t capitulate.
Leahy: The Biden Harris Winken, Blinken, and Nod philosophy, and I say that because Tony Blinken is Secretary of State. Their philosophy is basically to concede America’s interest to the other party. That’s basically it.
Carmichael: Yeah. And then they’re also interested in only the politics. If they can bring in two or three million people into this country, that helps them win reelections even if bringing those people in increases drugs, increases the death from overdoses, increases rapes, murders, and crime in general. Even if it does all those things, they literally don’t care.
And that’s really the difference between the two parties. One is a party of government, and anything that empowers government is something that Democrats will do. Republicans have become the party of the working men and women of this country and stand up for standing up for the American worker.
Leahy: The Biden, Winken, Blinken, and Nod’s foreign policy is weakness and appeasement. And we’ve seen what happens with that. Iran is taking advantage of us and then Hamas is bombing Israel. And they’re trying to now appease them both. It’s just ridiculous.
Carmichael: Bad policy.
Leahy: Weak, weak, weak.
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 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 to the studio to weigh in on the effort to replace Liz Cheney with Elise Stefanick on the GOP House Conference Committee and reveals his plan to put pressure on the elite classes of Democrats.
(Congressman Jim Banks clip plays)
Leahy: Crom that is Congressman Jim Banks, a conservative Republican from Indiana. He said, really, that his view of the Republican Party is the Trump view of the Republican Party and has become the party of the working class and not the elites. And that is the message that a Liz Cheney should be putting out there. It’s not the message Liz Cheney is putting out there. She’s the number three leader in the House Conference committee in the GOP. Now she’s about to lose that position it looks like.
Carmichael: Right. I think that Kevin McCarthy was on with Maria Bartiromo and they brought this question up. And she asked Kevin McCarthy point-blank whether or not he supported the Congresswoman from New York.
Leahy: Elise Stefanik from upstate New York, my old stomping ground.
Carmichael: Yes. She’s terrific. And he said, Yes, I do. In other words, he didn’t equivocate at all. He said, Yes, I do. There will be a vote to remove Liz Cheney.
Leahy: As the number three in the hierarchy.
Carmichael: To replace her. That’s who Kevin McCarthy says he’s supporting now.
Leahy: Elise Stefanik is a Harvard graduate, and she was born and raised in a suburb of Albany. The district she represents actually is in the northernmost part of New York States, where I grew up as a kid. Spent many years there. But it’s a conservative district. It became the big district in the big fight in 2010.
The Tea Party fight with Independent guy Doug Hoffman barely lost because the RINO Republican there dropped out and backed the Democrat. Very heated. After four years, six years, that person was out. Elise Stefanik has done a very good job winning that district. She’s moved up to the Northern part of upstate New York from Albany. She’s not exactly a hardcore conservative in her voting record. But on the big issues, she’s been 100 percent behind them.
Carmichael: And she’s also a Donald Trump supporter.
Leahy: Yes. That’s very clear.
Carmichael: Very clear. And your point about the RINO Republican, I think, is interesting. The party is slowly but surely getting rid of the RINO Republicans. And the freshman class that came in 2020 on the Republican side is a very very solid class of Republicans who stand up for the working people. Liz Cheney doesn’t care about the working people. I’m not sure exactly what she does care about other than herself.
Leahy: She cares about Liz Cheney.
Carmichael: That’s what I just said.
Leahy: I don’t think she’s been back into Wyoming very much at all.
Carmichael: I said other than caring about herself, I don’t know what she cares about. So I’ve figured out what her game plan is.
Leahy: What is that?
Carmichael: She’s now tired of being in Congress. She’s not exactly a Democrat. She doesn’t see a path to winning elections as a Democrat, especially out of Wyoming.
Leahy: That’s not going to happen.
Carmichael: She doesn’t see that. She has recognized that she’s not going to be able to retain her seat. So if you’re not going to be involved in politics…
Leahy: In 2022 in Wyoming.
Carmichael: Yes. If you’re not going to be a politician and you still want to be a power person, what are you doing?
Leahy: She’s going to go be a CNN commentator.
Carmichael: Yes. She is now grooming herself to be the next Nicole Wallace so that she can go on TV. It might even be a network. It might not be a cable company. It might be a network where she then becomes a big wig.
Leahy: The conscience of the Republican Party.
Carmichael: Exactly. And so this is what she’s up to now. This has nothing to do with principle. It has everything to do, though, with her maintaining a position of influence and power. Whoever the nominee is in 2024 of the Republican Party if it’s Trump or Trumpian then she’ll be trashing them just like Nicole Wallace.
Leahy: Absolutely.
Carmichael: That’s what she’s hoping.
Leahy: And for our listeners, Nicole Wallace was a former Republican consultant.
Carmichael: Well, she was a spokesperson for the Bush administration.
Leahy: Well, of course, the Bush administration.
Carmichael: I’m just saying that’s what she was. And so when people say that the people who were in the George Bush administration opinions are that of Republicans, that’s just false. George Bush is kind of the Don Sunquist of the country.
Leahy: Oh, yeah.
Carmichael: Nobody invites him to speak to a group of Republicans. He will get invited to speak to some international group or maybe some group of Fortune 1,000 executives. But he doesn’t get invited to Lincoln Day dinners.
Leahy: No.
Carmichael: He doesn’t invite the things that are the Republican hardcore and the political class. I’m talking about the state-level political class. And I think that there are other Republicans who are slowly but surely being weeded from the party. But I want to go back to when Paul Ryan as Speaker. He passed a lot of bills out of the House that died in the Senate because of the filibuster.
I’m not trashing Mitch McConnell. I’m saying the institution. Part of what Republicans need to figure out is strategic. If keeping the filibuster is important and I think it is, then they need to come up with ways of putting pressure on Democratic constituents to have to pick between two things they don’t want. They have to figure out how to put pressure.
And I’ve got some ideas on how to put pressure on Democrats to pick one or the other. Because you still can pass things through reconciliation. And that doesn’t require budget reconciliation. and that includes spinning bills and taxing bills. And Republicans can pass bills out of the House and send those bills to the Senate.
And then send a bill to the Senate that requires 60 votes. And make the first vote to be so incredibly upsetting to the billionaire class of the Democrat Party and the CEO class of the Democrat Party. And right now, the CEOs in this country, many of them are woke because they don’t want to be canceled. They don’t want to lose their job.
Leahy: So your suggestion is to inflict crumbs House of Pain on CEOs,
Carmichael: House of Pain on CEOs and House of Pain on billionaires. And then say, which one do you want? Do you want this bill passed over here? In which case, you need to get your Democrat senators on board so we beat the filibuster, or do you want this pain? It’s up to you.
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.
Photo “American flag on Capitol Building” by House Republicans and photo “Crom Carmichael” by Crom Carmichael.
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 to the studio to discuss the cancel cultures looming boomerang effect on Democrats and Trump as the official leader of the Republican Party.
Leahy: We are joined by the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Good morning, Crom.
Carmichael: Good morning, Michael.
Leahy: Well over the weekend Donald Trump made a little bit of news. He spoke at CPAC.
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: And by the way, just as an aside. So the Hyatt Hotels hosted CPAC and now all the Democrats are trying to do a boycott of Hyatt Hotels. Hyatt responded, ‘tough!’ (Laughs) I like that. ‘We believe in diversity of thought.’
Carmichael: Which hotel chain is Pritzker’s? The governor of Illinois.
Leahy: I think it might be Hyatt.
Carmichael: Maybe he’s not associated with it anymore.
Leahy: It sold off.
Carmichael: But let me say this you can do something for a certain period of time like this cancel culture. The cancel culture is going to soon come back and bite the people who are trying to run it. It’s going to bite them in the butt because it’s wrong. It is fundamentally wrong. And let me say this. It is anti-American.
Leahy: Totally anti-American.
Carmichael: It is anti-American. Forget the Constitution for a second. I’m talking about our nature. Our nature is to discuss and to disagree and to come to conclusions after a full debate. That’s what our nature is as a country. And the left hates that. They want to be in control. It’s really kind of interesting. And by the way, Biden’s one point nine trillion dollar so-called coronavirus package is exactly what I’m talking about here.
It epitomizes it. Only nine percent of the one point nine trillion, only nine percent is for coronavirus if you expand the definition of helping coronavirus to its extreme. The other 91 percent is for Democrat interests. And so what the Democrats have done is they’ve divided our country. And by the way, it’s not 50 percent of the country that’s going to benefit. It’s like 20 to 25 percent of the country is going to benefit. Everybody else ends up taking a back seat.
Leahy: You are right as always about the ownership of the Hyatt hotel chain. It is the Pritzker family. J.B. Pritzker inherited a lot of money, is part of that family, but it looks like he’s the first cousin or second cousin to the guys that are running it right now. So not involved in the operation of it.
Carmichael: Well, but I mean he may not be involved in it, but financially he is still part of it it sounds like.
Leahy: Possibly.
Carmichael: So he’s a little conflicted.
Leahy: He’s a conflicted guy.
Carmichael: He’s going to be conflicted. But if we can if we continue on here. You have you had this one point nine trillion dollars and let here’s where the biggest for these. The biggest chunks are going. They’re going to the teachers’ unions who are going to be rewarded ultimately for not doing their job now. Think about that for a second. you’re going to get billions and billions of dollars for not doing your job unless it turns out that your job is to make sure that Black and Hispanic children do not get a quality education.
Leahy: Well the other element of the teachers union jobs is to present and indoctrinate a left-wing anti-American ideology to K-12 students.
Carmichael: Well, yeah, but they’re not doing that because they’re not even in class.
Leahy: When they are in a class that’s one of the things they’re doing.
Carmichael: Yeah, but I’m talking about what they’re actually doing now. Then you had the blue states and their pension plans which are completely underwater. We’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars underwater from irresponsible management and over-generous payouts. And then you have the private sector unions it turns out. Private sector unions have had these industry groups like the Trucker’s Association is actually one giant pension of 400,000 people all across these states and all these different companies.
And so it’s not just one company. and these companies are underfunding their unions. And the reason they’re being underfunded is well, I take that back. They’re not really being underfunded the plans are being mismanaged. The returns on the plans over the last 15 years have been less than five percent a year. They projected to be in the eight to nine percent range if they had hit their projections.
Which they should have by the way if they were properly managed and if they had then they would be funded. You have these cronies who are put in charge of managing the pension funds. And they then abuse that responsibility and then Democrats turn around to the taxpayers the non-union members and say pony up you have to make good for the mistakes of our side.
Leahy: This is basically, you know, class warfare. economic class warfare upon taxpayers, small business people, and middle-class Americans.
Carmichael: Yes. What this is an organized crime done ‘legally’. And I put legally in quotes and it dwarfs it. I mean organized crime is a five billion dollar a year industry maybe. I’m just picking a number here. This is 90 percent of one point nine trillion. And then Biden’s coming in with another package right behind it. Now, here’s why this all ties into Trump’s speech. Trump is now back. There about four or five Democrats in the Senate who know that if they vote for this one-point-nine trillion-dollar package they will likely lose their next election.
Leahy: So we’d say Joe Sinema.
Carmichael: Well no – Joe Manchin.
Leahy: Now you can understand why I said Joe Sinema because we’re in the land of transgender.
Carmichael: Kristen Sinema. Tester. John Tester.
Leahy: He got re-elected though in 2018.
Carmichael: 2018. So he’s going to be running in 2024.
Leahy: I kind of call him a communist with a crew cut. (Chuckles)
Carmichael: But he’s not one of us but he’s going to be stuck. And then Sherrod Brown. Sherrod Brown is a lefty but he’s in a state that’s now pretty solidly red.
Leahy: 2024 he’s up again. Sherrod Brown.
Carmichael: Is that when he’s up.
Leahy: This coming year 2022 remember Rob Portman announced he’s resigning. There’s going to be a big brouhaha for the Republican nomination.
Carmichael: But all of these all of these Senators have to look out. If they just got re-elected in 2020, then they’re not up until 2026.
Leahy: Right.
Carmichael: They have lots of maneuvering lots of wiggle room.
Leahy: There will be a presidential in between.
Carmichael: And Trump is the leader of the Republican Party.
Leahy: Undoubtedly.
Carmichael: There’s not anyone who’s even in the league.
Leahy: He was very smart. I thought it was a very well-worded speech – a well-crafted speech – right on policy issues. And I thought he was very smart right upfront to say I am not starting a third party. That was very smart.
Carmichael: Yes. Because what the left is trying to do is to divide the Trump supporters which represent 70 to 80 percent of the Republican Party now. And I’m not saying the rest of it is not Trump supporters, but they wouldn’t necessarily leave the Republican Party. If Trump runs for re-election or runs for election. I don’t know if you call it re-election or not.
Leahy: If he runs for a non-consecutive second term. Thank you, Grover Cleveland.
Carmichael: There you are. Here’s what’s interesting about this. Trump is such a leader of the party. And by the way, he will be enormously effective in 2022.
Leahy: Yes.
Carmichael: Out campaigning for candidates.
Leahy: Already in Ohio, he’s endorsed a guy who’s running against this squishy Anthony Gonzalez who voted to impeach him. Gonzales is gone. Gonzalez will be defeated in 2022 in the House. And he’s already going to be weighing-in on these issues.
Carmichael: Alright and so has he endorsed somebody in Ohio?
Leahy: Yeah, this Max Miller, who was a former aide to him.
Carmichael: For the Senate?
Leahy: No, no. For the House seat that Gonzales has. He’s not endorsed for the Senate. He probably won’t for a while.
Carmichael: Well at any rate though, what I’m saying is is he’ll be out and he will campaign against those who voted to impeach him. And frankly well he should. And he will be very effective I believe in helping Republicans retake control of the House. And if and if he does do that, then he won’t have to announce that he’s running in 2024.
Leahy: There will be a groundswell for him.
Carmichael: Until he decides that he wants to because you can be an almost candidate and do a whole bunch of things legally that once you announce, it changes.
Leahy: Max Miller is the guy in Ohio that Trump just endorsed.
Listen to the full 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.
