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 conservative commentator Tomi Lahren to the newsmaker line to weigh in on corporate wokeism and waking up the under-30 TikTok crowd to freedom and conservatism.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line right now by a very good friend from Out Kick: The Coverage, and Fox Nation. She’s fearless. Her name is Tomi Lahren. Tomi, welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
Lahren: Oh, great to talk to you.
Leahy: I’m not much of a beer drinker but I do occasionally have a beverage. And there was a time when Bud Light was the kind of beer that, you know, people who are all American, who play football and are heterosexual drank. People who were in fraternities and at parties. (Lahren chuckles)
What has happened to them? How did they come up with this idea to have transgender, or I don’t know if he’s even transgender? He’s a man who dresses like a woman, with Dylan Mulvaney as their spokesperson. What on earth were they thinking?
Lahren: Listen, they have done what so many other companies have done, and really the majority of companies have. They have decided that the Rainbow Mafia is more important to them, and appeasing them is more important than their actual customer base. So listen. They made a mistake. They’re paying for it.
They tried to put out a statement to smooth things over, but they still haven’t acknowledged what they actually did with allowing this transgender who pretends to be a woman and mocks women has actually done to their actual customer base. Until they acknowledge that, I’m sorry, they’re gonna continue to hemorrhage money and customers.
Leahy: Rainbow Mafia. That’s quite a descriptive term. Is that unique to you, or have others introduced that term?
Lahren: I like to think that I’m one of the first that has said it, but I think that there are many people now that have glommed onto to it. But it’s exactly what it is, right? So there is the LGBTQ community, and there’s the gay community. I don’t think anybody has a problem with that.
And then there’s a radical section of that community that I call the Rainbow Mafia that thinks that they can run roughshod over everybody else in this country with privilege and entitlement. And that’s why I call them the Rainbow Mafia, and they need to be stopped. They need to be defunded, as Democrats would say.
Leahy: What I find interesting is what were they thinking at Budweiser, right? I think there was a young executive there who has done brand management for other companies and came over to Bud Light and said, this is a declining brand, and we need to make it decline further. How do people think like that?
Lahren: Yes. See, that’s the problem because now we have this TikTok generation where the executives see these things on TikTok, and they think, oh, I bet everybody loves this. This seems to be so popular and trending.
And then they forget that’s just TikTok, and that’s just Gen Z. They forget that there’s a silent majority of customers and people out there that aren’t on TikTok and maybe aren’t on social media, and they aren’t dressing up as women in prom gowns.
They’re just average people that actually buy the product. There’s a huge disconnect between what these executives are seeing in their little bubbles and reality, and I think that’s why they would choose to use something so ridiculous.
Leahy: Did you see the non-apology from the CEO of Budweiser the other day on this issue?
Lahren: Yes, exactly. And that’s the thing that I think a lot of us take issue with is that Brendan Whitworth putting out the statement saying, oh, we didn’t wanna offend anybody. We love everybody. That’s not the point. You need to say, hey, listen, we are not standing for this man who dresses up and pretends to be a teenage girl marketing our product.
That’s not our brand; that’s not our identity. That could’ve been the explanation that a lot of us wanted, but unfortunately, that’s not the explanation that we got. It was we want everyone to come together. Okay. Not the point. You missed it. And so people are still gonna be angry and people deserve to be.
Leahy: Tomi, something’s been bothering me about the trends in the country, and that is the leftward tilt of Americans age 30 and under, and it’s a huge movement. I think of people aged 18 to 30 who really don’t understand the history of the country.
You understand the history of the country. You are a strong constitutional conservative voice out there, yet there aren’t that many sorts of in the 30 and underage group who look at things that way. How do we turn that around?
Lahren: I think part of it is we do need to engage in the culture wars a little bit more, right? I’m one of those people that thinks we need to focus on policy, of course, and getting our economy back and making our standing in the world stronger—all important things. But if we want to win young people coming up in the 2024 election and future elections, we really do need to take part a little bit in the culture war.
And we need to start entering some of these spaces that liberals have monopolized and controlled for so many years. Part of that is getting more active on social media. It’s allowing our voices to really shine through, to refuse to be intimidated, and going out of these conservatives or going onto college campuses and speaking to conservative groups and speaking to any groups is what’s really gonna be important.
Now, unfortunately, what happened with Riley Gaines and what’s happened with me on several occasions is going to continue to happen. We’re going to be met with anger and sometimes even violence. But we cannot let that deter us.
We have to show up. We can’t just keep showing up in places where they already like us. We have to try to change hearts and minds, and the only way to do it is to physically show up and be there and send the message.
Leahy: Aaron Gulbransen has a question for you, Tomi.
Gulbransen: Tomi, in line with what you were saying, I’ve been wondering how we get the young people on the Second Amendment issue because, of course, with everything that happened, the Left is very good at manipulating their emotions on a variety of ones. But that’s one I’d love to hear your opinion on and how to spread the conservative position on that amongst the upcoming generations.
Lahren: There is a lot of work to be done there, but I think that the best message when we’re talking about gun rights or really any rights is freedom. So if we lead with a freedom first message, that’s how you get young people to understand because there’s nothing that young people to test more than being told what to do.
So if you remind them, hey, listen, remember those two and a half years where everyone was scared of COVID and all of your rights and freedoms got taken away from you? Did you like that? And a lot of them would say no. There are still some young people that refuse to take off masks, but they are kind of beside the point. The majority of young people understand that freedom is important.
And when you talk about gun rights and gun freedom, it’s the same conversation. We need to start talking about how, oh, we can say all we want shall not be infringed, but the young people don’t see it that way, right? We need to make sure that they understand that once you start giving your rights away, you likely won’t get them back.
And how important it is when we look at history and all of the civilizations that have been disarmed and how they’ve fallen. And that’s how we need to reach these young people. And it’s going to take a little bit of work. I’m not gonna lie to you, but freedom is always been worthy enough to have.
Leahy: Your contemporaries, 30 years old and younger, have you had much success in dealing with your peers? Have you been able to persuade some of them to stop being lefties and move over towards freedom-loving?
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 “Tomi Lahren” by Tomi Lahren. Background Photo “Trump Rally” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
