Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to discuss age and politicians.
Simon: I am very pro-Trump, but I’m more pro-Vivek because Vivek is Trump without any baggage. And also, he’s more original even than Trump.
Leahy: He is quite original.
Simon: I have to admit a lot of his thinking, mirrors mine. So there is a little bit of arrogance in this because one of the things that he says, and I really believe because I’m a post-sixties guy myself, and he’s much, much younger. He is half my age.
Leahy: He’s 37. Thirty-seven. By the way, the youngest president elected was John Kennedy at the age of 43. Vivek would be 39
Simon: But let me say it, and I pointed this out in The Epoch Times that Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Leahy: Very good point.
Simon: And Alexander Hamilton, when he signed the Constitution, wait for it…was 20. These guys were incredibly, by our terms, precocious.
Leahy: It’s interesting because back to the whole, Trump will and Biden will be 82 versus Kennedy in 1960 at 43 and Nixon at 47, there was a vibrancy to the two of them.
Simon: Yes.
Leahy: Which Trump and Biden don’t have. Let’s be honest at that age.
Simon: I’m closer to Trump and Biden.
Leahy: But you’re pretty vibrant.
Simon: I try to be vibrant. I read this essay recently, don’t let the old man in. And I try not to because I work out and play tennis all the time. Anybody my age, that’s my advice to you. I think it’s necessary right now in our society for younger people to come in.
Leahy: I agree completely.
Simon: We can’t stay here forever, ala Pelosi or these people because no matter who you are, when you reach a certain age, your ideas are formed by what happened a long time ago.
Leahy: I’ve got a phrase for it.
Simon: Go.
Leahy: Ossified. (Chuckles)
Simon: That’s very good.
Leahy: I look at Joe Biden, and that adjective ossified comes to mind.
Simon: He’s ossified in his power.
Leahy: So the thing that’s very impressive about Vivek Ramaswamy is this. Saturday morning Trump comes out and says, I’m gonna be arrested on these trumped-up charges on Tuesday. He’s not been arrested yet.
Lots of things have happened since. But within an hour, Vivek Ramaswamy and his team have a spot on email release and stories come out. He’s the first guy that says this is…
Simon: And he challenged DeSantis and Haley to join him.
Leahy: Exactly.
Simon: And they didn’t. Finally, DeSantis did, but in a very mealy mouth way. And I’ll tell you something. I was sitting in the car when he did this. Right next to him.
Leahy: Were you sitting right next to him when he did that?
Simon: Absolutely.
Leahy: So this was Saturday morning when he wrote it?
Simon: I was riding around.
Leahy: What time did you hook up with him or join the travel team?
Simon: Early, early Saturday morning.
Leahy: This is fascinating. So did he have any advanced notice that Trump was going to make this claim?
Simon: Not as far as I know.
Leahy: So there he is. You’re sitting next to him. He composes a statement, which was spot on while he was in the car with you.
Simon: Yes, he’s also able to flip on his phone and video himself extemporaneously, boom on virtually any subject.
Leahy: Hitting it. So he’s got the advantage of speed and intellect on point.
Simon: That I’ve never seen in politics.
Leahy: That’s a very big comparative advantage because everybody else in politics, what they do as is they bring in the focus groups and they bring in the wordsmiths. And they just agonize over it.
Simon: I wrote in The Epoch Times, this guy’s not gonna need a speech writer. Some people have accused me of being pro-Trump, so I could be his speech writer.
Leahy: This is gonna be great for your book because there you are with him at the first really critical turning point in his campaign, and you see him compose in real-time this statement that boom, gets him out in front.
What’s interesting about this is on Monday night, Donald Trump puts out a social media posting after, in essence, DeSantis criticizes Bragg, the DA, for politicizing and weaponizing his Manhattan DA’s office. But then he throws the shade, he mentions I don’t know anything about paying hush money to a porn star. Obviously bringing up that as an attack point.
Simon: As a ding.
Leahy: As a ding on Trump. Missing the point in terms of winning the primary.
Simon: You could say he’s missing the point.
Leahy: Or you could say his point was he wanted to ding Trump.
Simon: One or the other, or both.
Leahy: Then Monday night, I think, changed the VP race, in my view. I don’t know what your thoughts are.
Simon: I definitely, agree.
Leahy: So then Trump goes up and says, oh, DeSantis is dropping in the polls. I think that young Vivek Ramaswamy is going to surpass him.
Simon: So far, he’s only called Vivek young. This is true compared to the rest of him; he’s very young. Vivek thinks that as it goes on, he’s gonna get a nickname now. I don’t know what it’ll be, but maybe he won’t, and if doesn’t, that will be, I think that will be a sign that he’s going up.
Leahy: I’ll tell you the nickname. Young Vivek. If he goes with that, it makes this point back that you and I have been talking about, right? The ossified nature of a 78-year-old versus an 82-year-old running for president in the general election. I think that post by Donald Trump Monday night was a signal.
Simon: Oh, I did too.
Leahy: The signal is, I’m not picking DeSantis as VP. Now, we’re looking at Kari Lake in Arizona, and I’m looking at Vivek. That’s what it looks like to me.
Simon: I had the exact same reaction, and I think that’s good too. Can you imagine Vivek debating Kamala? My piece on The Epoch Times is, oh yeah, that’s the tag to the whole thing. And all the commenters were saying, yay! It would be a donnybrook. It would be really something to see.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
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 “Vivek Ramaswamy” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to discuss the average age of presidential candidates and the genius of Vivek Ramaswamy.
Leahy: We are delighted to welcome to our studio, my very good friend, my former boss at PJ TV, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, excellent writer, novelist, mystery writer, and depending on the day, the most popular columnist at The Epoch Times, Mr. Roger Simon.
Simon: I’m happy to be here.
Leahy: I’m delighted to have you here. You’re just finishing up your book, American Refugee, and then you’re starting a new book, The Making of the President 2024.
Simon: Here I go again. (Chuckles)
Leahy: Here you go again. One thing I noticed of course, it’s a modern version of the classic The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore White. This is interesting, Roger to notice the difference in this country over the past 64 years since Kennedy, the Democrat nominee who won in 1960 was 43 years old. Nixon, the GOP nominee, was 47. Their average age was 45. This time around it looks like…
Simon: They’re 106.
Leahy: Yes, this time around, Trump is going to be 78 if he gets the nomination, which it looks like he will at this moment in time. And Biden, if he chooses to run, will be 82. The average age will be 80. What does that say about our country?
Simon: 80 is the new 45? (Leahy laughs) I don’t think so.
Leahy: That’s a great line.
Simon: I would say part of it is you better have a vice presidential candidate who looks capable of taking over. I don’t think Kamala is, Miss Giggler. I think the guy I was traveling around with the last few days in South Carolina is the best possible vice president.
Leahy: He’s 37 years old. He’s our buddy, Vivek Ramaswamy. Tell us how this came about. You’re writing this book about The Making of the President 2024. How did you come to be spending the weekend driving around South Carolina in the same car with Vivek Ramaswamy, the presidential candidate?
Simon: Part of it’s thanks to you, and I tipped the hat. It’s not on now cause of airphones, but I usually wear a hat, and I tip the hat to you because you put me in first contact with him. And then I wrote some things about him and quoted him in The Epoch Times.
I think they liked it. And then is publicist, a bright woman named Trisha McLaughlin, sent me his schedule. He was gonna be in South Carolina, and do you want to come down? And I said, sure. The Epoch Times sent me down there, and that’s what happened.
Leahy: Tell us how the weekend went.
Simon: I ended up sitting in the s u v with him for almost two days.
Leahy: So who’s driving?
Simon: A driver and there were about four people in the car. I got to say, I’ve met a lot of politicians in my life or semi, he’s not really a politician yet, which is probably good, but from Teddy Kennedy onwards. And this is the highest IQ I’ve run into period.
Leahy: Of any political candidate.
Simon: Going away. There’s no question. This is a guy, as I wrote in The Epoch Times, I was sitting next to him while on his laptop as the car was driving, he was writing an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal all about his criticisms of the Federal Reserve.
At the same time, he is talking to someone on the phone and to the four of us in the car about all different matters and did it in five minutes. Now I’m a fast writer. And then he read the thing back to us and it was superb. There aren’t too many people who can do that on planet Earth. And also, his wife is equally brilliant.
Leahy: She’s a medical doctor, surgeon.
Simon: Yes. A laryngologist. It’s a hard word to pronounce, coming from the throat, which it does. And she’s one of the world’s experts in swallow problems. And a very attractive couple with kids that are eight months and three years.
Leahy: We’ve got a 37-year-old multimillionaire entrepreneur.
Simon: From biotech research into Alzheimer’s, among other things.
Leahy: He is a very intelligent and honest guy. No blemishes on his record that we know of. And very personable. And, speaking personally, because I’m a tennis nut, as and it’s probably in some of the audience, you know, he’s also an avid tennis player. And I found out subsequently because I said, hey, let’s play. And we were joking about it that he was number one in Ohio in the juniors. (Chuckles)
Leahy: That’s pretty good.
Simon: As well as valedictorian.
Leahy: But wait, there’s more!
Simon: I don’t know what could be more. He is also a bestselling author.
Leahy: He also plays the piano. He’s a classical pianist. How about that? (Chuckles) He’s a pretty good guy.
Simon: Yes.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
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 “Joe Biden” by Joe Biden.
Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to comment on the Silicon Valley Bank crisis and how it could invoke nationwide digital currency.
Leahy: In studio right now, our very good friend, all-star panelist, and my former boss at PJTV. That was 14 years ago.
Simon: Is that what it is? I can’t count that far back.
Leahy: Fourteen years ago when we first met. Also an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter. In addition to being a novelist and depending on the day, the most-read columnist at The Epoch Times, Mr. Roger Simon. Good morning, Roger.
Simon: Good morning to you!
Leahy: It is a delight, as always, to have you here in studio. You have a very interesting column just published at The Epoch Times about where this current banking crisis, the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, is going to lead us. And it’s not a very good place.
Simon: No. And it’s not just the Silicon Valley Bank, as everybody knows. It could be your bank and Credit Suisse and various other things. And something called Signature, which is about as woke as you could get. The problem I’m talking about is, you remember how this guy, Ram Emanuel said, never miss an opportunity for a crisis to do something new and dangerous.
Well, there’s a crisis going on, as we all know, and the thing that I think a lot of them have in mind is moving us all off of the banks that we may love or hate to digital currency. That means no cash and lots of conveniences, everything happens very quickly, and it means every single penny you spend even a candy bar at a 711 is recorded and known by the government.
Leahy: I cannot think of anything worse than to get rid of cash.
Simon: As I say, it’s communism beyond the wildest dreams of Karl Marx.
Leahy: Yikes.
Simon: Really, if you think about it, I mean, everything is under their control now. Then they can shut anything off if they don’t like a single thing you do. Boom. It’s gone in a second. Is your carbon footprint is too high? You can’t get gas today. That’s an example.
Leahy: Yes. They can control everything if we go to digital currency. How does that happen in a worst case scenario?
Simon: The famous phrase is, I think it’s from, how did you go bankrupt? It’s in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Slowly, but then all of a sudden, or something like that. That’s how it would happen, I believe. I think we’d wake up one morning, and it would be like that.
Biden or whoever runs Biden is doing everything by Executive Fiat. They might find a way to do that. They might declare another crisis. It’s COVID time and I guess because there’s a new pandemic it simplifies everything if all the currency is digital, and we can keep an eye on who is getting them the new shots or not.
There are lots of ways this could happen. And I think that everybody listening should be on what we used to call the French kevee, or something like that should really pay attention. Because this could happen in a lightning second.
Leahy: What a wonderful way to start the program.
Simon: On the other hand, spring will eventually come.
Leahy: Everybody’s drinking their coffee thinking, you know, Roger might be right here. Oh my goodness! But let’s try to see, well, okay. We see that as a possibility. What can be done proactively to stop that possibility?
Simon: Putting it out in the public and that you hate the idea. That’s really it.
Leahy: I totally hate the idea.
Simon: So do I. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have written the column.
Leahy: Thank you. I get my Captain Obvious award for that one.
Simon: So do I. I think that’s all we can do at the moment. I think it’s essentially evil, and you have to just keep your eye on evil because it’s everywhere in our culture right now.
Leahy: And growing.
Simon: Speaking of the spring, it just popped into my head that one of the things that have been canceled is one of my favorite songs. Zippity Do Dah.
Leahy: That’s been canceled?
Simon: Song of the South. That wonderful moment. You know, I remember as a kid when I watched it, I was just so happy.
Leahy: Why was it canceled?
Simon: Oh, because it’s a black guy singing it, and it hearkens back to slavery.
Leahy: But there’s nothing in the lyrics.
Simon: No. Nothing in it.
Leahy: Oh my goodness.
Simon: No. It’s just cancel culture.
Leahy: Okay, we’re gonna come back with some more positive opportunities for the future.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
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 all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to weigh in on Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s efforts to reject funding from Department of Education in the state.
(Zippity Do Dah plays)
Leahy: We brought that just for you, Roger.
Simon: I love that song. Brings tears to my eyes.
Leahy: Zippity Do Dah.
Simon: I think of myself at age seven, sitting in a theater watching that.
Leahy: In New York City.
Simon: And loving it.
Leahy: Yes.
Simon: It’s the decline of Disney personified. It’s so sad because Disney did wonderful things for the world.
Leahy: We’ll make it your theme song here, Roger.
Simon: You got it.
Leahy: We’ll play it.
Simon: This is an upper. But it’s a sad upper because it’s no more.
Leahy: But look, there is hope for the future.
Simon: Yes, there always is.
Leahy: We want to talk about some of that hope here because obviously, we had a warning about the possibilities of every digital currency taking over everything. That’s your column today at The Epoch Times. But I wanna bring some zippity do dah sunshine and light into the program this morning, and it comes in the form of an action taken recently by Tennessee House Speaker Cam Sexton. We talked about it.
And this has been a theme on our program for years to basically tell the federal government, we don’t want any of your Department of Education money because with your money comes strings. And, K-12 public schools are in trouble enough. They don’t need to have some Washington bureaucrat who’s woke telling you what to do.
Simon: Actually, dumbing them down.
Leahy: Totally dumbing them down. And of course, in K-12 public schools here in Tennessee, two-thirds of third graders are not at grade level in reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Simon: It’s a national illness.
Leahy: It’s at a national level.
Simon: And the Department of Education is at great fault. And one of the great things about the Republican candidates, at least all of them that I can think of, I don’t know about Haley in this, want to obliterate the Department of Education. It should have gone under Trump one, but it didn’t, but it should go now.
Leahy: And by the way, in his campaign, stop reiterated he would get rid of the Department of Education.
Simon: Oh, absolutely.
Leahy: Asterisk. You had a chance, and you didn’t. (Laughs) I’m just saying.
Simon: But I think he would, the next time. I believe that. I think it would be one of the very first things to go.
Leahy: I was very pleasantly surprised when about a month ago Tennessee Speaker of the House, Cameron Sexton announced that he wanted to start the process of telling the federal government, we don’t want your $1.8 billion from the Department of Education. That was a good sign.
Simon: Very good.
Leahy: Now the question is, how does it happen?
Simon: Yes, of course. The devil is always in the details. He’s started a new group that will study this. (Laughter) See now, this is where these things disappear or become one-tenth of whatever they should have been. But at least they’re doing it.
My hope would be that this process, this study of the procedure, would have a little bit available to the public, so the public can weigh in, and we can see exactly what’s being done and who’s doing it.
Leahy: This is in alignment with my thinking on it as well, Roger. There is legislative activity to start the process. And on Monday, Speaker Sexton filed legislation that would create an 11-member task force to study the process required for the state to forego federal funding. That’s a good start. Asterisk.
Simon: Yes, it is a good start. Have they published yet who the 11 are? Or is it a little early for that?
Leahy: The leader of it would be Penny Schwinn, the commissioner of education.
Simon: Whose brother is connected with CRT and all this stuff?
Leahy: She’s a UC Berkeley grad who is not widely respected here in Tennessee because she’s been promoting a left-wing curriculum and has really done nothing to enforce the anti-CRT law that was passed by the legislature. But having said that, if you’re going do a task force, I would say this.
Simon: I think they should put Glenn Reynolds in that group.
Leahy: I would agree. I think you’ve got to look at the logistics of it. The idea here, it’s interesting. The purpose of this is going to be they are going to begin meeting monthly in August and are going to give a strategic plan to Governor Lee by December 1st. But here’s the key.
In her role as chair, the legislation further requires that Commissioner of Education Schwinn notify the US Department of Education by August 31st and advise them on, wait for it…Tennessee’s intent to explore the possibility. (Laughs) There are three qualifiers right there of Tennessee rejecting federal funding. It’s a slow start, but it’s a start.
Simon: It’s a snail start.
Leahy: Yes. Yes. Snail. Moving slowly.
Simon: I hate to see that. I really hate to see that. One of the things about woke is it’s a money scam. It’s a kind of a weirdly advanced form of capitalism.
Leahy: It’s political crony capitalism.
Simon: Yes, exactly. And communism is capitalism in that way.
Leahy: Yes, exactly. All the money flows to the elite running the show.
Simon: Elite who are already in position and the rest of you can go suck lemons. (Chuckles)
Leahy: So here’s the thing. 11 members of this task force, Penny Schwinn is the chair. (Buzzer sound) Problem there. Then three state senators. They’re selected by, wait for it…the Speaker of the Senate, Randy McNally, who’s got a few problems of his own.
Simon: I hope they’re not transgender.
Leahy: I know.
Simon: Why doesn’t Randy McNally, if anyone’s listening to this right now, recuse himself at this point from anything like that?
Leahy: We’ve made that suggestion to him. On Sunday, we wrote for the first time in the six-year history of The Tennessee Star did an editorial, but we said just time for him to resign. What’s probably gonna happen with him is the session only has six weeks to go.
Simon: They still have to make that reference.
Leahy: Then three members of the State House, selected by Speaker Cameron Sexton. I think Scott Cepicky would be a great person to be on that. He’s been tracking the education thing. Then it gets one district superintendent selected by Speaker McNally.
One district superintendent, selected by Speaker Sexton of the House. Then one teacher, selected by McNally, and one teacher, selected by Speaker Sexton. All I have to say is none of these people have an interest in telling the Feds, we don’t want your money.
Simon: Yes. Or have an interest in actual education. It’s frightening because, you know, Abraham Lincoln was a kind of a genius, really, and a great writer of speeches. He went to a one-room schoolhouse. He didn’t need any of this stuff. I think you could do the inverse-square law on education and the money that is spent on it.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
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 “Cameron Sexton” by Cameron Sexton. Background Photo “Department of Education Building” by Farragutful. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon to discuss Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign.
Leahy: In studio all-star panelist Roger Simon. Roger, the way I look at it, we have 20 months left to save our constitutional republic.
Simon: I’m reading David Harowitz’s book last night before I fell asleep, The Final Battle. It’s very good. And he said essentially the same. And I believe it. I’m gonna be doing this thing The Making of the President 2024 versus Theodore White, and make a fool of myself.
Leahy: But you’re not gonna make a fool of yourself. This is gonna be a very good book. And, we talked about how great Theodore White’s 1960 book, published in 1961. The Making of the President 1960. It was written in a first-person journalistic style that changed the way everybody reported on presidential campaigns. It was a fabulous book.
Simon: There you go. I’m nervous. However, that’s the way I write. Just instinctively. Coming from being a detective writer to a journalist. If you can call it that. So I’ll be covering it for The Epoch Times.
Of course, they will be sending me around the country. So on occasion, I’ll probably be calling into this show rather than sitting here. I’ve done it a little bit before in 2016, for PJ Media. I was in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Iowa.
Leahy: All the usual places. I like Iowa, by the way.
Simon: Oh, I do too.
Leahy: By the way, I don’t know if you know this, but we launched The Iowa Star last month.
Simon: I do know.
Leahy: And by the way, I don’t know if you know this, also the path to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination does go through The Iowa Star.
Simon: Okay.
Leahy: (Laughs) We’re gonna say it until it becomes true. I’ll give you a little publicity in the book.
Simon: Alright. On the road there I think. It’ll have an influence. What’s interesting about all these states when you go out and do these things is you realize how big they are.
Leahy: Yes. Geographically big. It’s a big country.
Simon: Yes, it’s a big country and you can’t really cover it all really.
Leahy: No.
Simon: This will be in the book and in my coverage, of course, you, we end up with all the other journalists at some bar that they all selected mysteriously. And then gossiping with each other and you’re looking at your watch, oh, it’s midnight, and that’s it.
And then there’s the other big phony baloney thing that happens is you should go talk to a ‘phony voter.’ So you’re talking to one guy or gal somewhere. It’s some truck stop that’s supposed to represent the state, which is, of course, ludicrous.
Leahy: It’s just one guy or gal at a truck stop.
Simon: One guy you happen to stumble on talking.
Leahy: It’s fun, though to do it in first-person observation.
Simon: Oh, it’s a lot of fun.
Leahy: It’s a lot of fun.
Simon: It’s exhausting, but it’s fun. It is physically exhausting.
Leahy: But what’s interesting about this, Roger, is that I think that, after the Theodore White book in 1960, he followed up with 1964 or 1968 and 1980, and as I’ve said previously, each book got more boring.
But nonetheless, there’s been a lot of others now who will do a what happened in this presidential race. Jack Germond and Jules Whitcover did one in 1976. think in 76. Another guy did on 88, What it Takes. I forget the fellow’s name. He’s passed away. They all tend to be of a certain worldview they tend to be more from inside the Beltway, Washington journalist.
Simon: It’s a New York Times view.
Leahy: You’re not gonna have that at all. You’re gonna have the Roger Simon view which is why I wanna read the book.
Simon: First of all I’d lose my job. No, I wouldn’t. I have no interest in that. But apropos, I think this is gonna be an interesting election to write about because there are various people coming in. One of whom you’ve been talking a lot about.
Leahy: Vivek Ramaswamy, 37-year-old worth half a billion dollars. Harvard undergrad, Yale Law. Great guy.
Simon: Yes, and absolutely brilliant. Now, here’s the problem. He’s got a huge problem, which is breaking through to the public. That doesn’t really know about him and he hasn’t yet registered in the polls that I have seen.
Leahy: You’ve got, if you look at American history, you’ve got names that people recognize, Tippa Canoe and Tyler Two Two. You know that I Like Ike. Yep.
Simon: Those people were well known to the public way before their campaign.
Leahy: FDR. Yeah. Now that’s a good point. FDR, JFK, LBJ. All of the other people have been in the public arena for 20 years.
Simon: And so has Trump been.
Leahy: Even longer for Trump. But Vivek Ramaswamy is 37 years old.
Simon: But he’s done interesting things.
Leahy: Oh, he’s done very interesting things.
Simon: He’s trying to attract attention smartly. Yesterday on Twitter, he complained that they were gonna hide the rules for getting on the debates, which is usually what percentage you’re getting in wet poles or whatever. Simultaneously, I think it’s very interesting. We don’t know this time who is going to be asking the questions at the debate.
Leahy: That’s another interesting angle on it.
Simon: Because the last time around we had the horrible story of Chris Wallace who will go into journalistic infamy for having guided the discussion, shall we say, away from the center of and away from the Hunter Biden laptop. That was probably the worst moment in debate history that I can ever think of.
Leahy: It was, yes. Worse than Candy Crowley in 2012 when she misstated something.
Simon: Now, who’s gonna do it?
Leahy: Are you available?
Simon: I am, but I don’t think I’ll be it, but I’ll tell you that when The Epoch Times here did that primary debate in the TN-5, we used experts rather than journalists.
Leahy: That was a great debate, by the way. I think it was groundbreaking in terms of the way it framed the debate.
Simon: It was groundbreaking, but it has not been picked up the way we were hoping it would as a new style of debate.
Leahy: That’s because The Epoch Times is gonna have to do it. Now the first debate on the Republican side, it’s gonna be in August in Milwaukee. And I think Vivek Ramaswamy is putting out a warning shot that says hey look, I need to be on that stage.
Simon: Yes. That’s what he’s doing.
Leahy: That’s what he’s doing.
Simon: And smartly. That’s his job. He’s smart and he’s running for office. He should also get into that thing, and I’m talking about who gonna be asking the questions of this thing. Is it gonna be MSM people?
Leahy: I’ll give you some names.
Simon: Jake Tapper?
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
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 “Vivek Ramaswamy” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
