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:
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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 “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 recovering journalist Clint Brewer in studio to review national polling numbers that indicate a win for former President Donald Trump if the GOP presidential nomination were held today.
Leahy: Clint, I always like Thursday morning at six o’clock when you come in.
Brewer: Yeah?
Leahy: First we have to test the coffee.
Brewer: It’s pretty strong today, Mike. It’s always strong. I always make it. It’s not awful; it’s just strong.
Brewer: It’s high test today. (Leahy chuckles)
Leahy: High test.
Brewer: It’s high test.
Leahy: I’ll dial it back on Thursdays, but it is, it’s,
Brewer: If we had a time-traveling DeLorean, we could put this in there and go a long way.
Leahy: It’s Pike’s Roast from Starbucks. I’ll dial it back next time.
Brewer: It’s all right.
Leahy: It’s got caffeine.
Brewer: It goes with the mood of the show. It’s a little hard-edged.
Leahy: We got a little edge to it.
Brewer: Got an edge to it. Sometimes a little bitter.
Leahy: I wouldn’t say bitter, although I could understand why you might say that.
Brewer: That was a joke, Mike. That was a joke.
Leahy: That was quite clever, by the way. You could make a living using words.
Brewer: I could.
Leahy: You could. Let’s talk a little bit about the national stuff.
Brewer: It’s all over the place, right?
Leahy: It’s all over the place. I come from this Clint and we’ve got 20 months to save the country because I can’t imagine what January of 2025 if we were to inaugurate either Biden or some other Democrat lunatic for another four years…
Brewer: We are not on a good glide path at the moment.
Leahy: Oh we are like in a very bad way. The banking system is shaky. The spending of the federal government’s outta control and the weaponized judicial system.
Brewer: Chinese leaders have just gone to Moscow.
Leahy: Look, I think that the Chinese have figured it out. Here’s what I think they’re doing. The Chinese are saying, that American century thing? We need to stop it. We can do it a couple of ways. We can try a war. Eh, we’re not quite there yet. Or we could try to basically totally destroy the country internally by promoting all sorts of disruption.
Brewer: I saw a story that I think was in The Economist. I actually like The Economist. One of their, one of their writers did like a forecast of a war in Taiwan and if the United States got involved, would cost China roughly 25 to 30 percent of its GDP. And it would cost America about. Four to 5 percent. It’s not a great way to look at war.
Leahy: I think it’s good.
Brewer: There’s not a great incentive for China.
Leahy: Especially since they’re making so much progress, basically stealing our intellectual property, compromising our leaders.
Brewer: Taking over Africa where all the precious metals people need for technology.
Leahy: Yes. They’re very smart, actually, and they’ve got a long-term perspective. Meanwhile, everything, literally everything that the Biden…
Brewer: And we can’t decide whether to kick TikTok out of the country or not.
Leahy: Talk about a brainer.
Brewer: They just flew a spy balloon over our country for four days before we shot it down.
Leahy: So we’re making the case here, Clint, that if on January 20th, 2025, if they’re swearing in any democrat, I think the Constitutional Republic, as we know it, is in deep trouble. The whole point is that we got 20 months here. So here’s my dilemma.
I think on the GOP nomination when you talk about a nomination or even a presidential nomination, there are national polls. Then there are state-based polls. It’s really the states that matter, particularly in the general election.
Brewer: Sure. Yeah.
Leahy: You could have one candidate up by 10 points in the national polls, but if that’s all coming from California and New York.
Brewer: But if they can’t win South Carolina, Iowa, and New Hampshire…
Leahy: And you have to win all those states. But right now, where we stand at the midterms, which were a disaster for Donald Trump.
Brewer: Yes.
Leahy: Real disaster. The only thing that we did was squeak by the House. And if Donald Trump hadn’t injected himself into the Pennsylvania race and the Georgia race, we probably would’ve kept gotten the Senate probably.
Brewer: Yes. And if he were a head coach, he would’ve been removed mid-season.
Leahy: But he’s Donald Trump.
Brewer: But he’s dominating the Republican field.
Leahy: That’s the point. That’s what I’m saying.
Brewer: If the election were today, he’d win the nomination.
Leahy: Oh, there’s no question about it. He would totally win.
Brewer: If the election were held today, he’d just be beating Nikki Haley because there are no other declared candidates, really.
Leahy: No, Vivek.
Brewer: Well, okay.
Leahy: I saw a poll that had of the declared candidates had Trump at 79, Nicki at 11, and Vivek at six. Declared candidates.
Brewer: Is that a state poll or a national poll?
Leahy: National poll. But the point is that yes. And if DeSantis gets in, which he will, Trump is still up 15, 20 points, right?
Brewer: I got to tell you, DeSantis, he’s got some work to do. Two points. One, I didn’t realize this and I read this the other day but Florida has a resign to run law, and he’s stuck in a gray area because the law’s been interpreted a number of different ways and it’s unclear.
How far he can go before he would have to resign? And if he does resign and he doesn’t have the apparatus of the Florida Governor’s Office behind him and he’s not the governor of Florida what does that look like when he runs?
Leahy: Whatever that law is, he’s got to either get a ruling or a
Brewer: There’s talk of that with the legislation. They actually talked about changing it when it looked like Charlie Crist was gonna be Obama’s running mate. There’s that issue. And then, here’s the other thing. You can’t win a Republican primary running under someone else’s flag. He has to make his own movement.
Right now he’s running off the brand of politics that Donald Trump created and the only differentiator there is DeSantis is actually a really good manager and Donald Trump is not. And so he’s running on his competency in the state of Florida. So that’s his differentiator. But I just don’t think that’s loud enough to get the electorate’s attention which is unfortunate. But it’s not.
Leahy: That’s a very good point. And Trump is relentless in his smash-mouth sort of way.
Brewer: Let’s be clear, he’s also getting some help from the left because the Democrats want Trump.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
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 One America News political correspondent Neil W McCabe to the newsmaker line to breakdown the 2024 Republican presidential candidates.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line, top gov tracker, our very good friend Neil W. McCabe, with One America News Network. Good morning, Neil.
McCabe: Michael, Crom, very good to be with you, man.
Leahy: So Neil, Saturday morning former President Trump puts out this tweet: I expect to be arrested by the left-wing district attorney in Manhattan on Tuesday on these trumped-up charges. Almost immediately, our buddy, Vivek Ramaswamy put out a tweet calling on the DA in New York to not make these charges because they were in fact, trumped up.
The Trump campaign made this a litmus test for the other candidates. Some of them ultimately came in and backed him but others didn’t. And your buddy Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida had a, oh, I don’t know, a weak defense of Trump, wouldn’t you say?
McCabe: (Chuckles) He checked the box.
Leahy: He checked the box. But what he didn’t say was that Donald Trump was unhappy with that response. And then he had this social media posting on Truth Social late Monday night where he said DeSantis is struggling. He’s probably gonna be behind young Vivek Ramaswamy in the polls when they come up. What do you make of that?
McCabe: Michael, we learned when we were doing the Breitbart polls together in 2016, and this is from the words of Pat Caddell, Trump wins on the issues, Trump does not win on personality. And Pat, I don’t know if he had this rant with you, but he had a rant one night and basically told me, I’m going to Trump Tower to meet with Bannon and tell Bannon that if Trump keeps making it a personality contest between him and Hillary, he will lose.
He needs to talk about Syrian refugees. He needs to talk about building a wall. He needs to talk about defending gun rights. And I think this is the problem with Trump because more than any other politician around today, it’s personality and issues. And there are a lot of politicians who have no personality, but they’re all issues. And there are some guys who are all personality.
But with Trump, it’s this constant battle. And I think the real sort of subtext of what’s happened in the last month with Trump versus DeSantis is that for the first time, DeSantis is reacting to Trump, not the other way around. I think the DeSantis people have had to move up their timetable to respond to this thing in Manhattan.
And you also saw DeSantis, a week or so ago basically responding to Trump’s criticism where he never really did it before. He basically ignored him. And Monday he had a thing in Panama City and the DeSantis people were calling around telling people, hey you might want to cover this thing in Panama City because there’ll be some availability for questions.
I think that the DeSantis people were shocked that it turned so badly against them. What regular Republicans want is, they just want everybody to rally around a Republican who’s getting sniped at.
The last thing I’ll say about this, Mike I guess on this rant though, is that in the midterms for 2022, we saw the breakup of the marriage inside the Republican Party between the staffers, the consultants, the leaders, and the conservatives because you had the staffers, the consultants, and the leadership working against conservatives who were the nominees. And on Wednesday morning, they were ecstatic.
They were cheering that so many conservatives and MAGA candidates lost and for good or for bad, right? If you have a party, everybody has a primary, and then everyone supports the nominee. If people in your party are actively working against your nominee, that is not a party anymore.
Leahy: You’re down there in Tallahassee?
McCabe: Yes.
Leahy: You’ve been down there for several months, and I think you’re still working on that exclusive interview with Ron DeSantis. I see that your buddy Piers Morgan…
McCabe: Wait a minute. I spoke to him. I spoke to him for eight minutes about Hurricane Ian. So there you go.
Leahy: You got the eight minutes. Your buddy Piers Morgan went down and spent an hour with him in the mansion there and had an interview that’s gonna air on Fox Nation Thursday. DeSantis is trying to distinguish himself from Trump and criticized Trump’s style. Is that a winning approach for DeSantis?
McCabe: It’s the only lane available to him because he recognizes the Trump dichotomy, which is personality and issues. So he can’t go after Trump on issues. He has to go after Trump on personality, which is a mistake. If you attack Trump on personality, you will lose.
The guy has to make a case so he agrees with Trump on all the issues. Trump endorsed him and made him the governor of Florida. Trump was nice to him and considerate to him after he was the governor of Florida and did whatever he could for him.
And even after DeSantis’s people started sniping at Trump, he continued to be nice to him. And so you have to ask Governor DeSantis, why are you working so hard to block Trump from being president of the United States just so you can be president of the United States?
Leahy: I think the argument would be DeSantis would have a better chance of beating Joe Biden. What are your thoughts on that?
McCabe: People tell me, we’re really tired of all this Trump static and it’s just too much. There’s just too much noise. He jumbles everything up and makes everything crazy. And we need a guy who’s calm. A calm conservative.
I can tell you, DeSantis is not the guy who calms the water. (Leahy chuckles) He banned black studies from AP black studies in high schools. He’s going after the drag queens.
Leahy: He didn’t ban it. He said that version of it wasn’t gonna work
McCabe: The AP course is banned. And he said, you know what, when AP said, hey, we don’t think the governor’s right about this. The governor says we might just throw out the SAT too. The governor has said he will throw out the SAT if the college board doesn’t behave itself.
He also took 50 homeless migrants from Texas and told them they were gonna have paradise in Martha’s Vineyard. He videotaped it so he could use it in campaign commercials and give it to Fox. I’m not saying it wasn’t a funny prank. Don’t tell me he’s the guy who’s going to calm everything down and not have static.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row, Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed top gov tracker Neil W. McCabe to the newsmaker line to discuss Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee creating a woke National Guard and Ron DeSantis’s legislative agenda and presidential aspirations.
Leahy: Joining me and Crom Carmichael, top gov tracker, my very, very good friend Neil W. McCabe. Good morning.
McCabe: Hey, Michael! Very good to be with you, man. Hi Crom.
Leahy: You’re a guy who served in the military and is still in the Army Reserve. And you sent me this thing last night and I said, really? There’s this story out by William Jones from Tennessee National Guard Public Affairs Office. Nashville, Tennessee, February 27th. I can’t believe I’m saying this. “Diversity, inclusion, and equal opportunity are critical elements for success in the military.” Are you kidding me? Has Bill Lee created the Wokeist National Guard in the country?
McCabe: Well, apparently, that’s the goal, right? Because why would you start, uh, a joint diversity executive council if you didn’t want it to be the best? I can’t imagine a governor of Tennessee going by half-measures. Why would he do this just for show? He’s gotta believe it.
I got, I gotta believe that Bill Lee wouldn’t do something just to, uh, you know, throw a sop to the leftists. I think he’s into it. And of course, Major General Jeff Holmes who is the adjunct general of the Tennessee National Guard as you’ll recall was all set to jab, everybody with the COVID-19 vax. We’ll see how this plays out.
Leahy: And you found this, interestingly in, uh, it’s kind of a special military news service, right? Dvidshub.net.
McCabe: I’m a connoisseur of military public affairs. That’s how I make my living in the military. And so Divids is this depository where all the videos, all the pictures that the military takes, and the stories, is a resource for public affairs offices, but also for civilian journalists if they want to know what’s going on in the military. Not everything gets the full play, but this struck my fancy.
Leahy: Yes. And Neil, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna call this fellow up, William Jones, and see if, he’ll come in and talk about why Governor Bill Lee is creating the Wokeist National Guard in the country.
Carmichael: Is there a public affairs officer?
Leahy: He’s the public affairs.
Carmichael: Then that’s his job, is to explain things to the public.
Leahy: We’ll have him come in and sit right next to you.
Carmichael: That would be wonderful.
Leahy: Neil, you’re down there in Florida for One America News Network. You’re the Florida top gov tracker. You’re the national correspondent. Ron DeSantis has announced his book tour, The Courage to Be: Florida’s Blueprint for America. I wonder where this is headed.
McCabe: Yes, well, I think the point that the governor is trying to make is, uh, I was able to have success here in Florida and I can, and I can show other states how they can do it as the governor of Florida or maybe something else. Now there’s some talk that he’s running for president.
And just because he never dismantled his campaign committee from his re-election or the fact that they’re continuing to hire new people, that’s creating speculation. Just because instead of going to CPAC, like a lot of fancy people this week, he’s gonna be going down to Palm Beach where the Club for Growth, which basically is in charge of laundering money for the Koch Brothers, they’re having their own sort of candidate conference.
Leahy: They are at The Breakers, which is like three miles away from Mar-a-Lago. By the way, remember when you and I were both at Breitbart working the rope line on an event down here in Nashville where President Trump was speaking when he was running for president and he got into a dust-up with the Club for Growth.
And I leaned into him and I said, hey, Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, Michael Patrick Leahy with Breitbart here. I work with Steve Bannon. And he leans into me. He says, Breitbart, I love those guys. I love you guys. I love Bannon. What’s your question?
And I said you are in a dispute with the Club for Growth. Any comment about them? And his comment was, it was the headline of Breitbart. Club for Growth, they’re a pack of thieves. (Laughter)
McCabe: Well, it’s very simple, right? If I wanna attack somebody and I don’t want my fingerprints on it, I transfer a million dollars to the Club for Growth and then the Club for Growth runs the ads. They’re guns for hire. And God love ’em. You know, we all have to make a living.
Listen, everybody needs to buy their kids a bike for Christmas. I want people to be able to order a ham sandwich for lunch. I’m not trying to knock somebody’s job, but that’s what they do.
Leahy: Crom has a question for you.
Carmichael: Neil, I wanna switch gears just a hair here. Because I heard DeSantis being interviewed and he was asked, are you gonna run for president? And his answer was, it was non-committal. But he said we’re just starting the legislature here in Florida and I have a very strong agenda and things I want to get accomplished over the next 90 days in Florida.
So any decisions related to any possible run are not even going to be considered until after the legislature’s out. What are the big things? Because these would be the types of opportunities that DeSantis could have to make news. So what are the big issues in Florida that you think would resonate?
McCabe: He signed a peace treaty with Disney, so that issue is now over. He withdrew and declared victory. They’re keeping their district. It’s just that the governor gets to appoint people to the board who run the district. And so that’s done. A lot of people were expecting a concealed carry bill to go through the special session of the legislature that didn’t.
Florida used to be called the Gunshine State because gun laws were so far more advanced than other states. Now there are probably 30 states that have more free gun laws than the state of Florida. And so people are anticipating that the session begins Monday or Tuesday after CPAC.
I don’t know if it’s the sixth or the seventh. The state of the state is March 7th. The session itself is two months long. No bill can be considered unless it is filed before the session begins. So everyone is wondering why is there no pro-life bill being filed and what’s gonna happen with the gun bill.
And, of course, the insurance in this state is complete in the process, and so that’s gotta be addressed. They keep fixing the insurance laws but because of the hurricanes, you cannot live in this state, and you cannot invest in this state unless something is done to subsidize insurance. That’s just a fact.
Leahy: He’s got a pretty big agenda. That’s gonna take him until the end of May. Putting your predicting cap on here, what do you think is gonna happen in June?
McCabe: I think in June he’s going to say that after reflection and prayer, he has listened to the people across the country who are demanding that he bring his winning recipes to the White House.
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 “Bill Lee” by Bill Lee.
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 2024 GOP presidential nomination race.
Leahy: Roger Simon is in the studio with us. Roger is our all-star panelist. Roger, I recently turned 68 years old.
Simon: A kid!
Leahy: A kid! A real spring chicken. I have never in my life been more concerned that we are on the brink of World War III…
Simon: With good reason.
Leahy: Than I am today. My take on this is we have as our leader, our legal but not legitimate commander in chief, perhaps the worst foreign policy decision-maker ever.
Simon: I’ll tell you when it started.
Leahy: When did this start?
Simon: There’s an absolutely easy way to say it. On day one of the Biden administration, when he put the brakes on the Keystone Two pipeline, Vladimir Putin went, yay! Because that changed the whole global picture of energy.
The United States, which formally could have been giving all the energy that Europe needed to provide it in a war against Putin, was over. And Putin said to himself, oh, boy, we got an idiot in the White House and I’m on the move. And that’s when it happened.
Leahy: When you put it that way, Roger, I think you’re probably right. That was the beginning of it.
Simon: And during the Trump administration, the media was complaining, oh, Trump loves Putin, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But Putin didn’t do anything. All of sudden day one, it’s all over.
Leahy: And let’s come back a little bit back to the 2020 election. The reason that Trump and so many others fought so hard against the way the election irregularities went through the process, the reason that they fought so hard against that is because they knew that Biden’s weakness would lead to a decline in American interest in a big way.
Simon: His weakness plus greed. Anybody with IQ over 100 should be able to tell that the Biden family was totally corrupt with not only Russia but China. Now we have Xi making an alliance with Putin. Nothing could be worse than that.
Leahy: I agree completely. I had the opportunity to talk to somebody over the weekend who is a Navy pilot, and I’d ask him, what happens if there’s a war with China? And he had a three-word answer to that. We all die.
Simon: What else could it be?
Leahy: That’s not good. I don’t want to die.
Simon: It might be good for space aliens to come and take over the planet or something, but that’s about the only person they could be for whatever they’re called.
Leahy: I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Our children don’t want to die.
Simon: No. Who does? But if there’s a single Democrat out there listening to this, I would review how you make your decisions. I really would seriously do that. I used to be a Democrat.
Leahy: I was, too, until 1984.
Simon: You are a victim of hypnosis now of the worst sort, and because this is so clear and so evident that it’s almost tragic. And I don’t even know how these people do it. Have you all had a lobotomy? What’s going on?
Leahy: Well, there’s some of that. I do think, though, that combination of the worst possible commander-in-chief for this moment in history, because he has a combination of greed, arrogance…
Simon: Stupidity.
Leahy: Unwarranted stupidity, and unwarranted aggressiveness. And you put them all together, and you are moving toward World War III.
Simon: Now, let’s hope it won’t happen.
Leahy: No, I agree.
Simon: Let’s hope and pray, but also pay real attention at the ballot box because this ain’t going away.
Leahy: So here’s the thing. We are now in February of 2023.
Simon: You had to check your phone for that?
Leahy: Yes. February 2023. And, Roger, the next president will not be inaugurated until January 2025.
Simon: This is a long while.
Leahy: This is a year and 10 months. What I am concerned about is, first, it is going to be a huge battle and an uphill battle, I believe, for whoever the Republican nominee is to win the Electoral College and become president. It’s going to be a huge battle. It’s winnable.
Simon: Yes. But it will be a huge battle. It is winnable. And I think they really have to concentrate on what has gone wrong and really explain it to people in very clear teams. We need a really articulate person. Watching Hannity last night, I don’t believe any of the ones.
So far, there are only three people who I think are articulate enough to explain it. One is Trump. He’s very good at that. And the other is DeSantis. And the third one is Vivek. Vivek. I think the rest of them forget it. They shouldn’t even be there.
Leahy: You would then agree with me, and my new characterization of the 2024 race for the GOP nomination is Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, dark horse Vivek, and the Munchkins.
Simon: Absolutely agree.
Leahy: I think that’s a good way to describe it.
Simon: Also elevates Vivek, which will elevate the discussion. The best part about his running, I think he is a dark horse and is unlikely to win, although anything is possible. But on the debate stage, he is going to make this thing much more interesting.
Leahy: And he will advance an agenda that needs to be discussed.
Simon: Exactly.
Leahy: And that is going to be very important.
Simon: The rest of them are just cliche-ridden. Same old, same old.
Leahy: I listened to Pence the other night, and I thought, which cliche are we going to throw out now?
Simon: (Chuckles) It’s quite amazing.
Leahy: What a snore fest he is.
Simon: They don’t realize it. And even Haley’s very old-fashioned. And listening to Tim Scott last night on the Hannity show, my eyes were rolling backward. What is that guy doing? Nothing of importance.
Leahy: So let’s talk about this. Let’s assume that we are able to win the presidency back for Republicans and how we’re going to make it through the next year and 10 months. I’m very worried about that.
Simon: Prayer helps.
Leahy: Yes, that’s good. Is there anything that can be done given the current structure of our military decision-making and the woke military? It seems like a very bad formula.
Simon: People like us have a big contribution to make, which is to point it out.
Leahy: Keep talking.
Simon: Writing and talking and getting the information out there. One of the real problems and I hope the listeners can help with this, is that we are preaching to the choir most of the time.
Leahy: And we got to get it out to the other folks.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Vivek Ramaswamy” by Vivek Ramaswamy.
