Live from Music Row Monday 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 original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio.
At the end of the second hour, Leahy and Carmichael took a call from a listener named Leo who was appalled to see Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and his wife accosted after leaving the White House last Thursday night in Washington, D.C. Carmichael later explained how he saw the media changing COVID spreading narratives to fit their political agenda.
Leahy: Michael Patrick Leahy here with the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. On the phone Caller, Leo wants to talk about Senator Rand Paul. Welcome, Leo.
Caller Leo: Yes, Mr. Leahy. Thank you for taking my call. I just want to say that Senator Rand Paul is one of the best if not the best advocates for civil rights in the US Senate. And it is appalling what the terrorists were allowed to do to him and his wife in D.C.
Leahy: Did you watch that video, Leo?
Leo: Yes.
Leahy: It looked like a swarming as he left the White House Thursday night. Crom you and I were talking about this during the break. He left the White House and you would think after leaving the White House after the President accepts the nomination of the Republican Party you would think it would be a safe event. Apparently, Crom, the police were told to stand down there?
Carmichael: Well apparently so. There are more police outside of a Vanderbilt football game. The mayor of Washington, D.C., it is inconceivable to me that the mayor of Washington, D.C. was not part of the decision-making process to leave those people defenseless.
Because any police department and any chief of police who knows that an event that takes place at the White House like that they would have police deployed. That would be a natural thing for them to do. And since police were not deployed there must be a reason for their non-deployment.
Leahy: Yes. And it looked like to me Leo if you look at that video Senator Paul said he and his wife were surrounded by hundreds of folks forcing those police officers. He said that we were in fear for our lives and had a police officer not been there we would have been either killed or seriously harmed. Looking at the video Leo would you say that the Senator accurately described that circumstance?
Leo: Let me just say that I have been in the midst of 50 plus violent people while Senator Paul and his wife were among. And there is no doubt that (Chuckles) the slightest wrong move or happenstance could have resulted in someone being killed. So I’m sure that Senator Paul and his wife were afraid for their lives.
Leahy: Thank you for that call, Leo.
Carmichael: And there were a few police. There were a few. And there should have been hundreds of police protecting people who were there. And by the way, if you want to know the definition of peaceful assembly, that event would fall under that category. But yet how did the media portray it?
Leahy: This is interesting because the risk that they saw there to public safety wasn’t 100 people swarming around Senator Paul and his wife threatening them and saying vile things and pushing a police officer into them. The public safety risk that they saw was an hour before when hundreds of people gathered on the White House lawn and weren’t wearing enough masks to them right?
Carmichael: Right. The media threat was this could be a potential super spreader event. Now, the people who gathered the next day for the MLK event, that was not considered the potential of a super spreader event even though there were many many more people. And they were absolutely as tightly configured the next day.
And so what you see is that the media is just so selective in their definitions. And that’s why I say that you have to get back to first principles when you look at what is going on today. CBS reported that there had been 100 cases in the states surrounding the biker event in South Dakota. 100 cases.
Leahy: That was like a couple of weeks ago.
Carmichael: There were 250 thousand people that came to that event. 100 cases in the greater scheme of things and where we are today in the amount of protesting and the COVID transmission from the protests can’t possibly be comparable.
But this is another example of the media now moving the goalposts on what the definition of bad behavior is. Just gathering together peacefully if you are not a rioter then what you are doing amounts to some kind of health terrorist event.
Leahy: Apparently the media has established a new scientific principle. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it. There was a medical doctor and they forgot to say he was a failed Democratic candidate for Congress who was an expert on this at CNN, who said the event at the White House was a super spreader event because they weren’t wearing enough masks and they were too tightly grouped.
But that the following day the event there in Washington, D.C. where there were 7,000 or 10,000 people were gathered and tightly packed and that wasn’t a super spreader event because their intent was to protest social injustice. So apparently the scientific principle is, the intent of the individual engaged in the action determines whether or not the virus is spread.
Carmichael: Yes. And the average person watching the news now, I think I saw a report where 86 percent of the public does not trust what they hear on the news. Now that is an astounding number. And if I were part of the journalistic profession and I cared this is the qualifier here (Leahy laughs) and I cared about the reputation of the institution that I was a part of, that statistic would bother me.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Reportwith Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
