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 The Epoch Times Senior Political Analyst Roger Simon and Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles to the studio to discuss the hypocrisy of Democrats and the constitutionality of the impeachment.
(Maxine Waters clip plays)
Leahy: Anyway, that’s a Democrat member of Congress Maxine Waters from California. It sounds to me guys like she was inciting violence there. What do you think Roger?
Simon: Yes. She’d like nothing better. Unfortunately Maxine is still in office. I think she came in after Lincoln. (Leahy laughs) She’s quite a character. I would say the biggest phony in Washington, which is well close to everybody.
Leahy: That’s a high standard.
Simon: That’s a high bar. The highest. But before I moved to Nashville, thank God, and left LA I lived very close to where Maxine lived, but that was not south central her district.
Leahy: You didn’t live in south central?
Simon: I didn’t. I probably went there more often because I taught screenwriting down there. But she lived in a district called Hancock Park, which was the old rich area of Los Angeles before Beverly Hills.
Leahy: No kidding.
Simon: The reason Beverly Hills was founded is that Jews were not allowed in Hancock Park.
Leahy: Really? I didn’t know that.
Simon: So they made their own town called Beverly Hills. And Hancock Park is still there with grand houses. And guess who lives there?
Leahy: Maxine.
Simon: Of course and she represents a district as nowhere near as lavish.
Leahy: Now the Constitution specifies that you do not have to live in a district to represent it. I’m sure at some point in the very distant past she may have lived in South Central LA.
Simon: Probably somewhere around the early Paleolithic Age. She’s been there a long time. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: Andy, I have to tell you when Roger Simon is here, our vocabulary expands.
Ogles: I’m taking notes and copious notes here.
Simon: Everybody gets the idea. It was a while ago.
Leahy: Early Paleolithic. Hey, I have to share this. Roger back to you and our days at PJTV you remember I did interviews with Michael Barone and Andy Barnett on our old show that we did there back in 2009 in the beautiful studios in Los Angeles. And so one of the guys that I interviewed I was very excited about the pollster Scott Rasmussen.
Remember I did that interview with him? It was the first time I met him. He now does polls for Ballotpedia and Just the News. Here are the polling numbers of the day from Scott Rasmussen. I think he had Maxine Waters in mind. Here are the polling results. Seventy-two percent of voters Nationwide think political elites believe they are superior to everyday Americans.
Simon: Only 72 percent? (Chuckles)
Leahy: Are you listening Maxine Waters? We invite by the way because we are open and believe in freedom of speech, we always invite Democrats on the program. Since we’ve been doing the program now for over two and a half years Andy Ogles, guess how many Democrats have actually come on the program? I think it’s zero.
Ogles: Maybe one.
Leahy: Maybe one
Simon: You should have a special chair over here for Elijah to come.
Leahy: And yeah put a chair for the Democrats who have been invited who never come. Now one guy that we’ve invited many a time is Nashville Mayor Jim Cooper. And you know, I promised Mayor Cooper even though I call him up tin pot dictator. I won’t call him that when he’s in the studio right to be polite and we’ll very polite to him. But we have so many unanswered questions for him just as Roger you have a number of questions that you’ve posed to the phony’s in Washington D.C. who will be presenting the case against Donald Trump today in the Capitol.
Simon: Now to be pretentious again now I’ve been branded as this intellectual phony here but…
Leahy: No, no, no, no. intellectual, but not a phony. Authentic. You are authentically an intellectual.
Simon: Well there was the German playwright Bertolt Brecht who was a communist, however, he was very clever as opposed to our modern version.
Leahy: (Laughs) Andy’s cracking up here.
Simon: He wrote a number of plays in which they were very similar to what’s going to be going on in the Senate today. Like The Caucasian Chalk Circle with a crazy judge all the time. This time we have no judge, of course because the chief justice of the Supreme Court who is supposed to be the one who adjudicates an impeachment trial said, no, he’s not going to do it. Then we have Senator Leahy no relation.
Leahy: No. Distant cousin.
Simon: Really?
Leahy: It is. Really. I admit I’ve never met him. But okay for all you genealogy buffs we have the same great great grandfather Andrew Leahy who came from Tipperary County in the 1830s and by the 1840s owned a farm in Hemmingford Quebec. He descends through the first wife I descend through the second.
Simon: Well gag me with a spoon. What’s interesting about that is pretty close to the most left member of the Senate.
Leahy: Rush calls him Leaky Leahy.
Simon: He’s probably slick.
Leahy: I did this and you have probably forgotten about it, but when I had your PJTV program I did invite Senator Patrick Leahy as a guest, and we were basically going to call it the Leahy Family Feud. He did not like that idea apparently. (Laughter)
Ogles: You know as you talk about this impeachment business. I’m concerned. I’m concerned about the impeachment. I’m concerned about the latitudes that the president is taking. The latitude that Congress is taking. Ignoring the Constitution. But that’s even a hat even happening at the state and the local level during this time of COVID where you have these emergency orders that are changing and ignoring constitutions and state laws.
We’ve got to get back to our roots and our Founding Fathers and what the Constitution says. I mean you’re the expert but I would say that this impeachment trial is unconstitutional. I would want Republicans or Democrats for that matter saying stop! Stop the nonsense. Let’s get back to the business of the American people.
Simon: I couldn’t agree more. The other thing is the heart of it is that we’re filled with unconstitutional election law now. And the heart of the attack on the last election is that all these election laws were changed across the country by fiat instead of by legislatures, which is unconstitutional as you say. And if you if your elections are unconstitutional all flows the whole thing is a house of cards that shouldn’t be there.
Ogles: I mean because to your point the Constitution is clear that state elections are the purview of the state legislative bodies. Not judges. Not Governors. Period.
Simon: Or even less. Secretary’s of State or “election officials.” God knows what. The governors did it too.
Leahy: Election boards promulgate rules under emergency powers that they don’t actually share with the public. By the way, I just happen to have here guys a copy of the Constitution of the United States right in front of me and I will read to you Article 1 Section 3 Clause 6. The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments when sitting for that purpose they shall be on oath or affirmation when the president of the United States is tried the Chief Justice shall preside. Well, the Chief Justice looked at this and didn’t comment. But he said he’s not the president. I shall not preside.
Simon: Exactly.
Leahy: And then he’s a private citizen. Where in the Constitution does it say that the Senate can hold an impeachment trial, Andy Ogles, for a private citizen?
Simon: That happens down the street.
Leahy: It happens down the street.
Ogles: That’s the revised version of the Constitution. (Laughter) That’s the problem right? It’s like there’s another document that they’re reading from that they haven’t shared with the American people.
Simon: Exactly.
Leahy: (Distorted voice) The secret Democrat Party constitution.
Ogles: Do you need to know a handshake or something? (Laughter)
Listen to the full third hour:
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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 “Chuck Schumer” by Senate Democrats. CC BY 2.0.
