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 State Representative Sabi ‘Doc’ Kumar (R-Springfield) in studio to talk about the racist slur he received from Justin Jones and the accomplishments of immigrants in America.
Leahy: We welcome to our microphones, my very good friend, former boss at PJT V, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, the number one, depending on the day, columnist at The Epoch Times, and all-star panelist Mr. Roger Simon. Good morning, Roger.
Simon: Good morning. Good morning! I didn’t sleep the whole night through. Is that the song? Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. No, I didn’t do it.
Leahy: (Laughs) We’re delighted. And a special guest in studio with us today, State Representative Sabi Kumar. Good morning!
Kumar: Great to be here.
Leahy: So, let’s talk a little bit about your background. You were born in India. Is that correct?
Kumar: That is true. I was born in India, and I arrived in the United States in 1970.
Simon: What part of India are you from?
Kumar: New Deli. And I arrived in 1970. So 2020, the year of COVID was my 50 years in America.
Leahy: Wonderful. How do you make a living?
Kumar: I’m a surgeon by profession. I practice surgery in Springfield, Robertson County, about 35 minutes north of here, and I did that for 43 years.
Leahy: Wow.
Kumar: And in 2020, because of COVID, there was no elective surgery being done. And I had stopped taking emergencies about five or six years before. So I really had nothing to do, no elective surgery, no emergencies, and it gave me time to think and reflect about my career and have put in 43 years and have gotten used to not getting up every morning and rushing to the hospital, I decided it was time to go ahead and close my surgery practice.
Leahy: And when did you run for the State House of Representatives?
Kumar: 2014.
Leahy: And you served ever since?
Kumar: That is true. It’s my fifth term.
Leahy: You’re a Republican from Robertson County. Obviously, you were there on the House floor. During the expulsion hearings of Justin Jones who had basically, overtaken the House and did a bullhorn, it has never happened in 227 years. There was this remarkable dialogue where from the well of the House, Justin Jones repeated what I will say was a racist claim against you.
Kumar: That is true. I’ve been in the United States for 53 years. I have been very fortunate. I believe I’ve been very successful. I practiced for that long with a good large surgical practice. People have been invariably kind to me. It was remarkable that in those 53 years, I had not come across a racial slur…
Leahy: Until Justin Jones called you, “The brown face of white supremacy.”
Simon: My friend Larry Elder and colleague at The Epoch Times, what he ran for governor of California against, he was trying to get rid of the dreaded incumbent, was called the blackface of white supremacy by The Los Angeles Times. You weren’t the first.
Kumar: Never having come across a racial slur of anything, I wondered if this was a racial slur. So I asked my daughter, who’s an attorney, I said do you think that’s a racial slur? She says, yes, Dad. (Laughter) So having confirmed and clarified that we came across this. But the background to what really started this was that we were having a discussion in our government operations committee.
Leahy: So you were on a committee with him?
Kumar: I’m in committee.
Leahy: Before the expulsion hearings.
Kumar: And the discussion is about what is known as divisive concepts. (Leahy laughs) And there these things are destroying America. We are such a divided nation. And these concepts, again, as I told Mr. Jones on the floor of the House too, you look at everything from the lens of race. While talking about divisive concepts, I brought up the fact that how race itself is a divisive concept, running America down, being anti-American, and yet taking advantage and enjoying all the benefits of being American, the pride and everything.
And I took two examples. I pointed out our vice president, immigrant parents. Father is from Jamaica. Mother is from India. In the Stanford area in California academically became successful and went on to be professors, and raised a daughter, Kamala Harris. She had good schooling and a good career in college. Went on to be an attorney.
Went on to be the attorney general of the state of California. Went on to be a senator from California to the United States Senate and now is the vice president. Now for a daughter of immigrants, that is a successful journey. So after a successful journey with the kindness and honors she has received in America, her view of America? America is a racist country.
Simon: She’s in a cult, and she’s a fraud, that woman. Because as you remember, during the presidential campaign, she did this thing on Biden and pretended she was like on a bus when it was just a lie. She just loves identity politics. The Democratic party exists only by identity politics.
Kumar: So I took the contrast to that, and incidentally, that contrast happens to be, again, a daughter of immigrants. This is a daughter of immigrants. There’s another daughter of immigrants who grew up in South Carolina. Two Indian parents, and of course, I’m talking about Nikki Haley.
She grew up there and went through the difficult times that people come across when you are in a different culture, and things are different. So her parents entered her in a beauty pageant when she was seven years old. Cute little thing. She goes there, and they say to her, honey, we don’t have a category for you. You know what I mean.
But they gave her a little doll as a gift and sent her home. She’s happy. Went on to have good schooling and good colleges and went on to be in the House of Representatives in the state of South Carolina and then governor.
She served two terms and went on to be a UN ambassador under President Trump despite rattling a bit with President Trump during the election times. So here is a daughter of immigrants who came through the same things and achieved so much. What is her view of America? It’s a great country I can run for president.
Leahy: And on that note, we’ll come back more with Representative Sabi Kumar. This is a great conversation.
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.
Background Photo ‘Tennessee State House” by Ichabod. CC BY-SA 3.0.
