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 and senior editor-at-large at The Epoch Times, Roger Simon, in-studio to discuss his non-interview with California candidate for governor, Larry Elder last week and the U.S. Open.
Leahy: In studio with us, the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, good friend, former boss at PJTV, and now the editor-at-large for The Epoch Times and the fastest-growing conservative newspaper in America, Roger Simon. Good morning, Roger.
Simon: Good morning. And glad to be back in Nashville.
Leahy: We sent you off on a very perilous duty. A mission almost behind enemy lines. You went out to California, your old stomping grounds to do some stories for The Epoch Times, about the Newsom recall election. Tell us about your trip to California. What’s the difference between California and Tennessee? And how glad are you to be back in Tennessee? (Laughter)
Simon: And I can’t tell you how. It’s like, quite amazing. I moved to Nashville a little more than three years ago and it was getting bad in my old stomping grounds of Los Angeles with the homeless and all that stuff that you watch on TV.
I didn’t realize how bad it is. It’s gotten worse yet. All my old stomping grounds, my old friends are mighty depressed. But they are excited about Larry Elder’s campaign. I’m an old friend, Larry’s, and I went out there to follow him around a little bit. I went to his house to interview him, which was like a non-interview interview. I wrote about it for The Epoch Times.
Leahy: When you say non-interview interview, it’s like a couple of friends just getting gather and shooting the breeze.
Simon:Â Exactly. I mean, I had a list of questions. You know, I had some pitches. Well, what should I ask Larry? Because everybody’s asked him everything. And, as you know, a radio talk show host for, umpteen, years, so the guy knows how to do an interview.
Leahy: He does the interview, but also everything.
Simon: He thinks everybody’s heard of radio. I mean, he’s on the radio four hours a day, and all he does is tell you what he thinks. (Laughter) And he’s a very articulate man. So I kept saying to people, what should I ask him?
This guy used to come to my house for dinner so I know him pretty well. And so I end up I get to his house and he’s upstairs in his home office. And I hear I’m talking to his longtime girlfriend, Nina, and we know each other too.
And we’re chatting. And I’m hearing Larry up above on some kind of Zoom interview. And then Nina goes out to get coffee, and I hear Larry yell Roger! And he’s coming down the stairs. He sits down at the table with me, and all my questions were out the window.
I started talking to an old friend. I didn’t record it. I didn’t do anything. It was totally unprofessional. (Laughter) And then at the end of about half an hour, of course, he’s a candidate and the fact that he gave me a half-hour…
Leahy: That’s a lot. That’s big.
Simon: Totally. I think he was making a mistake, actually. (Leahy laughs) Anyway, he had to go onto it yet another press conference. And off they went in an SUV. That was the end of it.
So I was left writing up two friends chatting. But you find out different things. And I asked some human questions about how he was feeling and how he was dealing with all of this. They weren’t really questions. It was just chatting, as I would if I had to do an interview with Michael Patrick Leahy.
Leahy: Yeah, we’d just sit and talk.
Simon: I know pretty much what you think having been here, most of the important issues, although I think you don’t know enough about what’s going on in the U.S. Open right now.
Leahy: I admit. I do not know enough about what’s going on in the U.S. Open in tennis.
Simon: True sports fans, and I’m sure it’s on Outkick with Clay that Novak Djokovic is on the cusp of doing something that’s not been done since 1969, winning every Grand Slam tournament.
Leahy: Okay, so let’s just step back. The Grand Slams are Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the French Open, and the Australian Open.
Simon: Correctamundo.
Leahy: At least I know the Gram Slams. How many has Djokovic won this year?
Simon: He has won all three except the U.S. Open which is going on at this very moment.
Leahy: You watched it last night.
Simon: I watched it last night, which was stupid because I had to be up here earlier in the morning, but it goes on at night. He is two matches away from actually doing that achievement.
Leahy: Do you think he’s going to succeed at it?
Simon: I have no idea because he’s now going to be playing the two most difficult. The most difficult in the old days were Federer and Nadal.
Leahy: The old days.
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.
Photo “Larry Elder” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
