Live from Music Row Wednesday 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 Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) to the newsmaker line to discuss the ramifications of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance at the Met Gala, Secretary of State Blinken’s Zoom testimony, and the $3.5 trillion spending bill.
Leahy: We welcome to our newsmaker line our very good friend, Congressman Tim Burchett from the Second Congressional District up in the Knoxville area. Good morning, Congressman Burchett.
Burchett: Good morning, brother. Thanks for having me on.
Leahy: I’m always happy to have you on. Look, I know this is very disappointing to you, but your good friend, Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, apparently did not find a $35,000 donor to give you an opportunity to go to this Metropolitan Gala up in New York City last night. I know you’re very disappointed by that.
Burchett: Yeah, I was. I get a little ticked off when I have to pay at Arnold’s. (Laughter)
Leahy: I think Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, she’s going for a different type of idea as to what it means to be a member of the House of Representatives. I think she’s following the Kim Kardashian model, right?
Burchett: Yeah. I agree with you. When she and I first became friends in our freshman orientation when I saw where she was headed.
I said, Look, I said you might find this odd, I said, but you better worry about the Democrats more than you do the Republicans. I said you’re in a safe district.
But the Democrats, they are the ones that are going to kill you. That is exactly what’s going to happen. They don’t like that. They’re mad. Why is she getting there and I’m not.
And you watch. You just watch. When she has something on the floor. Unless it’s the cure for a catastrophic disease, I think they’ll slap it down or it will never get to the House floor.
Leahy: I think she really is trying to be more of the Kim Kardashian because obviously, she has this dress. You know, she looks good in it, but she’s going to this gala and it’s a white dress, kind of low cut or whatever.
And on the back of it, I guess she got the Chick-fil-A font, it says Tax the Rich. And obviously, she kind of did a whole bunch of Kim Kardashian poses and got a lot of publicity for it. I don’t know what irony is beyond that when somebody in Congress does that, how do their colleagues respond to them?
Burchett: Not well. I know that she gets in trouble with it, and they’re already bringing her up on ethics. And I’m sure they’ll say it was an in-kind contribution, but she’ll still have to report it. I don’t think you can take a $30,000 income contribution from anybody.
So I think she’s probably going to have some out-of-pocket expenses easily and could be fined. It could be sanctioned or something like that. I don’t know. $30,000 is a heck, a lot or $35,000 or whatever it was.
Leahy: Some donor gave her the ticket, right?
Burchett: That’s what the story is.
Leahy: That’s not ethical, is it?
Burchett: Well, it’s not typical at all, I guess. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I should report it if somebody let me cut in front of them down here at the IGA. (Leahy laughs) I saw that and I just said, man, those are red flags everywhere, she’s going to get popped on that every which way.
And the thing was they probably been doing it for years. And there was a couple of other Congresspeople that were there, and I’ve noticed that they haven’t made a statement even about it, because now they got kind of outed and they’ll start looking at those roles and seeing who else is there.
Leahy: I saw a congressman from another congressman from New York. Is it Mahoney?
Burchett: That ERA dress? Looks like somebody made it with shoe polish or something. I don’t know, man. Someone wrote on it ERA Now or whatever. That’s just too much. It’s just too much.
Leahy:Â Did somebody pay $35,000 for her ticket?
Burchett: And that dadgum dress she was wearing, she needs to get her money back on that one.
Leahy:Â Well, look, if you and I were to be fashion critics and say, who were it better, I think hands down. It was your friend, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, even though I think the ethics thing is going to be a problem.
Burchett:Â I’m just disappointed that Carhart didn’t sponsor me there.
Leahy: (Laughs) If you had been sponsored and had been passed by the ethics department, what kind of outfit would you have worn?
Burchett: Something Farm Bureau approved I’m sure. Something my red neck ass, I just don’t do those fashion shows brother. We have those local charities and I’m like, no, I’m going to send the wife on that one boy. I ain’t doing it.
Leahy: You had a bit of a weird show with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. I call him the beta male Secretary of State. I call him the former partner at Winken, Blinken, and Nod.
That guy that. Didn’t you have a House Committee meeting that he was supposed to attend in person he showed up on Zoom, right?
Burchett: Yeah. Foreign affairs. I mean, I said, I think in one of the national TV shows, I said Ronald McDonald and Bozo called because they were wondering why they weren’t included in that clown show.
It was just unbelievable, brother. He lies, he lies and he lies. And then he gets cornered and he says, well, that’s classified. I think you understand what that means. And it means you don’t have the guts to tell us or you don’t know.
I called for his resignation. I had his staff sergeant, Ryan Canals, the one army guy who got killed, his people, his father and stepmother, and I think his sister, they’re all the constituents of mine, but their neighbors of mine out here.
I live out in a little area called Corrington. It’s connected to the Gibbs community, kind of a rural area of Knoxville. And they live out here, man. And we just had his funeral Saturday on 9/1 in the afternoon on the football field.
And I was hot. I probably shouldn’t have even got on the mic, but I just led into him had a picture of him on the front page. The Knoxville Focus or little weekly newspaper, the only paper I take or daily.
It ain’t worth anything but to be put in the bottom of the dog pen. But I held that picture up, and I just read a little quote from his Mama, who was obviously devastated, and her little boy was killed needlessly.
And then I just led into that guy sitting the blood on your hands. You need to resign. But he is just one part of this administration. It’s just cover-up, cover-up, cover-up. And then when you get to the point, you blame Trump.
At some point, they’re going to have to realize Trump’s not in the White House, this babbling old man that they’ve got in there who’s cognitively challenged, he’s still walking around McDonald’s trying to find a soft-serve ice cream machine.
This guy, it’s unbelievable, man. Last night I was up to, I guess, 1:30 a.m. or 2:00 a.m. with this transportation, $3.5 trillion, anything old radical liberals wanted on that they are touting.
And the young ones, they’re just keeping their mouth shut because they’re looking at this thing going, man, my people back home are not going to buy this.
My working-class Democrats, the labor people, and stuff, they don’t get into this. They don’t comprehend this and they shouldn’t. What’s going on in this country with this administration, they cannot believe just how much to the left.
Everybody thinks that well, he just does that stuff just gets elected. No, they believe that garbage and they’re putting it out and they’re going to wreck this country. They’re going to wreck us. They’re going to tax us and here we are.
They claiming that we’re going to go into a bad winter and they’re going to tax all this fuel. Then who do you think that’s going to hit? That’s going to hit working-class people.
And then you’re going to tax the billionaire and trillionaires. We’re going to take it from them, tax the rich. All they’re going to do is pass it on to us.
Do you think they’re not going to pass another? They’re going to put another nickel on that six-pack of beer and somewhere down the line and you’re going to end up paying it through inflation.
Leahy: Yeah, we got a really rough situation here Congressman Tim Burchett. Why don’t you fix it and then come back next month and tell us how you did it. How does that sound?
Burchett: Well, I’m going to fire Blinken if I can.
Leahy: All right. Thanks for joining us, Congressman Tim Burchett. We really appreciate it. Come back again soon.
Burchett: Thank you, brother.
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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.
