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 the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to explain the best way for Republicans to respond to the impeachment trial.
Leahy: In studio with us the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Crom, How should Republicans in the Senate respond to this pending impeachment trial?
Carmichael: Well, I think, first of all, let me read what James Langford the senator from Oklahoma said. This is what he said.
“This is not a trial. This is political theater. You cannot remove someone from office who is already out of office. In this trial, there is no current president. No chief justice and no possibility someone could be removed from office because they are not in office. In a moment when our nation needs to unite this trial will only create even deeper divisions.”
And that’s all true. So the way the Republicans should actually treat this is they should treat it as a farce. The Republican senators should treat it as a farce. And their targets should not just be the Democrats the targets should be any Republican senators who agree with the Democrats.
Leahy: And I’ll tell you what that list is right now.
Carmichael: There are five of them.
Leahy: Five of them. Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ben, Sasse of Nebraska. Mitt Romney of Utah, what is Mitt doing? Nobody knows.
Carmichael: Now Pat Toomey has already announced he’s not running again. So he’s looking for a lobbying job. So it may be impossible to shame him. But here’s what the shaming needs to be. It needs to be about the importance of being a team player. And the Democrats do a much better job because their discipline is there because they simply threatened them with a primary opponent and the defunding of their political life.
And they also say and if you go against us don’t expect to get a lobbying job in Washington. We will make sure you don’t. So they will make your life miserable if you go against them, not only while you’re in office, but they’ll make your life miserable for the rest of your life. And so they’re mean. And if you are going to play in a game or a competition then you need to play by the same rules as the opposition. and that’s unfortunate.
It’s unfortunate, but it is a fact that if you are playing in a competition and one team is breaking the rules or doing something that’s extreme but within the rules then you need to do the same thing. And by the way, let’s look at the NFL as an example. The NFL is a business and it makes a lot of money. And in the last few years, especially the NFL and this has been happening for a long period of time but more in the last few years, they have been doing more to try to protect the players in the NFL.
It used to be that you could double team somebody on the defensive line one could hit a defensive lineman high. And while that person is being engaged high somebody else hits them low and you and you hurt their knee. And that happened a lot. Well, now they have a rule that you can’t engage a defensive lineman below the waist so that you have to block them up high if there are two people.
If they’re two people engaged you can no longer tackle to the head. That’s called targeting. And these are all, by the way, these are all good rules but if the referee let one team target and one team breaks the knees of a defensive lineman the other teams in the league would have no choice if they want to compete but to follow that lead.
Leahy: I want to follow up on your theme. You’ve made you’ve bet you talked about this before.
Carmichael: Let’s talk about though how they could make it a farce.
Leahy: I want to run something by it. Just get a reaction perhaps to see if this is too incendiary. But along this thing theme, you know people often say when you’re trying to get a realization about what’s really going on the phrase they use is wake up and smell the coffee. Right? I have a variant on that to talk about how the other side is playing. Wake up and smell the combat. That’s where we are right now.
Carmichael: So how do you treat this in a way to make it a farce? Because Eric Swalwell is one of the lead people so they ought to be attacking Swalwell as a communist agent. And somebody who literally sleeps with the enemy.
Leahy: Sleeps with the enemy.
Carmichael: And any Republican who endorses anything that Eric Swalwell says they might as well be communists themselves.
Leahy: The phrase that you could describe him. The Chinese spy. Beautiful. Her name was Fang Fang. And you could figure out the rhyming that would be appropriate for that would describe his activities with that Chinese spy.
Carmichael: Then you say where is Jeffrey Toobin? He should be here fighting for the Democrats because Schumer himself said this is an election issue.
Leahy: He said that.
Carmichael: Where is Jeffrey Toobin? Where is Bill Clinton? He needs to be here. They need to make a joke of the whole procedure.
Leahy: Ridicule.
Carmichael: Ridicule. And the targets should be the five Republicans because you say we already know the Democrats are lost. We already know that we know that this is ridiculous. We know that they are doing this as an affront to our Constitution. We know that. We know that Eric Swalwell is in bed with the Chinese. We know Nancy Pelosi is in bed with the Chinese. We know Diane Feinstein is in bed with the Chinese. List them. List them! And then even expand the list so that you have some Democrats that have to say I’m not in bed with the Chinese. Then that gets into, when did you stop beating your wife?
Leahy: Exactly. And then the answer is yes, you are you’re in bed with the Chinese because you voted to impeach a president who would not be in office.
Carmichael: And that is exactly what the Chinese wanted you to do. You’re in bed with the Chinese.
Leahy: Well, literally if you want to talk about being in bed with the Chinese, the president’s son is on video.
Carmichael: Yeah, but he’s not in the House.
Leahy: I understand. But the president is there.
Carmichael: But you could bring that up too.
Leahy: Along the first line.
Carmichael: Well that’s actually not even a farce but you can make it part of the argument. And so the point of this thing is that the Republicans in the Senate need to make the Democrats in the house and in the Senate incredibly uncomfortable.
Leahy: Objects of ridicule. That’s the old Saul Alinsky technique.
Carmichael: That is what this deserves. Yeah, if this is in fact a farce, which it is, it needs to be treated as a farce, not as something solemn. And every time Schumer tries to say anything then throw the word erection at him. And then turn to Leahy who will be presiding and say that’s something you may have had 20 years ago. Make this a joke.
Leahy: Senator Patrick Leahy my distant cousin. Half third cousin.
Carmichael: 85 years old.
Leahy: This isn’t a side just to say who will talk about Senator Leahy. There was a report he was taken to the hospital last night by the way. We wish him well.
Carmichael: Maybe he doesn’t want to preside over this farce either. But the whole thing needs to be turned into a farce.
Leahy: Well in terms of the farcical element of it my distant cousin whom I’ve never met on the other side of the political spectrum Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont has been there since 1974. He is the President Pro Tempore. Chief Justice Roberts said I’m not presiding which is a signal that this is unconstitutional in my view. Kamala Harris can’t preside over it because it would be an obvious conflict of interest.
Carmichael: Why?
Leahy: Well, that’s a good question.
Carmichael: I mean, why would it be a conflict of interest for Kamala Harris but not for a Democrat senator?
Leahy: That’s a very good question. Well, actually, let me just stop and say the following. You make a good point because…
Carmichael: Can Leahy vote if he presides.
Leahy: That’s a good question. I think he can well that’s already biased because he voted twice to convict in the previous impeachment. As did Harris.
Carmichael: Yeah, but if he says I cannot vote because I’m presiding then he would at least be recusing himself from the vote.
Leahy: I don’t think he’s volunteered that.
Carmichael: They need to make it a joke.
Leahy: It is a joke.
Carmichael: They need to and they need to make Swalwell the complete butt of the joke. (Leahy laughs) Then they need to bring in Jeffrey Toobin. They need to bring in Chris Cuomo and the whole CNN crowd. Then they all need to be laughing. The Republican senators all need to be laughing at how silly this is and how the world is looking at us. And that the Democrats are the ones who started it.
Leahy: I really like this idea.
Carmichael: Republicans are losing ground because Democrats do things that are so outrageous. But Republicans treat the outrageous behavior as if there was something to it.
Leahy: And there’s nothing to it. It is farcical as you say.
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.Â
