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.
At the bottom of the second hour, Carmichael discussed the mainstream media’s history of making false predictions and statements and questioned their credibility as an institution. He added that if they were held to any credible standards like the police that they would be out of business.
(Flashback media’s Middle East montage clip plays)
Leahy: That was just a montage of the mainstream media’s stupid talking heads and overpaid by a factor of 25 or 50. Saying stupid things about the president’s move of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in Israel. They predicted war, and what do we have Crom? We have peace.
Carmichael: We have two treaties and more to follow. But here is what is so interesting about this. So I’m going to take this topic in kind of a very different way and that is the nature of innovation. The nature of innovation comes from strange places. You have no idea. That’s why an economy where capital flows freely…
Leahy: Is the way to go.
Carmichael: And you have low taxes on risk-taking.
Leahy: Command and control disrupt innovation for that very reason.
Carmichael: Yeah. It doesn’t disrupt it it just stops it. And so in this case this reminds me a little bit of Reagan and Star Wars. Or what he called the strategic defense initiative. For those of us who are unfortunately old enough to remember that. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: I’m going to say, fortunately, Crom.
Carmichael: We are still here.
Leahy: We are fortunate.
Carmichael: We are fortunate to talk about it but unfortunately, we lived it. That was close to 40 years ago when Reagan said look, we’ve got to figure out another way to render nuclear weapons to be useless. And so he came up with the strategic defense initiative and everybody including many people of his own party thought he was absolutely crazy.
Leahy: Most people in his own party.
Carmichael: But the Left, in particular, called it to be crazy. But also members of his own party. To me, this is a non-partisan type of question. And innovation comes from places that you would least expect it. And then by the way when innovation is being discussed nobody thinks it possible anyway.
And so everybody poo-poos innovation and so that’s the nature of things. Well, Reagan comes along 40 years ago and he proposes SDI, and everybody said oh that’s going to create a war. That’s going to create tension. It will never lead to what Reagan says he wants which is fewer nuclear weapons. It will never do the things that Reagan wants.
And low and behold it did. So here we come along and you had President Bush. You had Obama. I think probably Clinton when they were all president and running as candidates they promised to move the capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And none of them ever thought about it once they got in.
Leahy: They were all false promises. And they knew it. They knew it.
Carmichael: Yeah. The state department and all of the intelligence advised against doing it. I mean there wasn’t anybody in the Trump administration that I can remember who supported it. Not at the time. Pompeo did but at the time that he did it, I don’t think he was secretary of state at the time.
Leahy: He was in the House of Representatives.
Carmichael: I think Tillerson was still there.
Leahy: Rex.
Carmichael: And he thought it was a terrible idea.
Leahy: He did.
Carmichael: So you have all of these people who said it was a terrible idea and all these terrible things are going to happen. Here’s the key thing. The very same people that got that so wrong, those very same people, they are still on the networks pontificating about Trump.
Leahy: But you know how that works, right? There is no look back to all the things you got wrong. It’s basically what are you saying today to criticize the president? That’s all the mainstream media is about.
Carmichael: I understand that. But the credibility of the institution, these very same people. You have 600,000 police officers. You have about one incident a month. Which is 12 when police officers get into an altercation with a Black person that at the time that is unarmed in the conventional sense of being unarmed. All kinds of problems with that. And then these very same people who can’t seem to get anything right…
Leahy: Nothing right!
Carmichael: They still get to keep their jobs and get paid. Imagine if the media were held to the same standard as policemen and women. Imagine if they were held to that standard, we wouldn’t have CNN. CNN would be gone. ABC would be gone. NBC, CBS, and The New York Times. I have a wonderful story about The New York Times. (Leahy laughs) This Jerusalem thing turned out to be a genius move.
Leahy: Absolutely.
Carmichael: A genius move. And then what Trump has done is Trump has managed and you have to give some credit here to Jared Kushner because he has spent a lot of time.
Leahy: As much as I hate to agree with you on that…
Carmichael: I know you don’t like him very much.
Leahy: No, no, no. As much as I would hate to agree with you on this I think I have to agree with you because he spent a lot of time on it.
Carmichael: He has spent a tremendous amount of time. And exactly what he said to convince the parties to do a peace deal with Israel is going to create a book about it. There will be a book.
Leahy:Â Untied Emirates Peace Deal.
Carmichael: And there are three or four more.
Leahy: Quite a few that have just been announced.
Carmichael: In the pipeline.
Leahy: In the works.
Carmichael: And by the way, what do you think his main selling point was?
Leahy: Economic growth I guess.
Carmichael: Economic growth would certainly be one of them. The question is, who is your biggest enemy and threat? Iran or Israel?
Leahy: Ah, that’s a good point.
Carmichael: I think so. And it’s the opposite by the way of Harris-Biden.
Leahy: Biden-Harris. Is that a person now?
Carmichael: That’s the new ticket.
Leahy: Harris-Biden. (Laughs)
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 Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.Â
