Live from Music Row Thursday 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 all-star panelist and The Epoch Times’ Editor-at-Large Roger Simon in-studio to promote the upcoming debate hosted by the Nashville Republican Women and The Epoch Times happening June 12th in Nashville.
Gulbransen: Roger, you’ve been working on something that should be really exciting and it’s a lot of fun. And so I’ll just let you talk about the debate you’re planning.
Simon: Yes. I was just in the Big Apple, with a sour core these days, but I was at the headquarters of the people who employ me at The Epoch Times, which is, I have to say, the greatest outfit I’ve ever worked for.
And I’ve worked for everybody from The New York Times to Warner Brothers. The Epoch Times is quite something. And if you don’t subscribe, you’re missing out on the best newspaper in the country right now, bar none.
And what we’re doing is we’re setting up a debate here in the company of the Nashville Republican Women and my wife, Sheryl Longin, a new kind of debate in the 5th Congressional District.
As everyone knows, most political debates are garbage, and they’re run by journalists like Chris Wallace, who famously probably cost Trump the election in the last election.
Gulbransen: Among several other things.
Simon: Anyway, what we’re trying to do is change the nature of these debates by, instead of having journalists ask the questions, having real experts in the field ask the questions. So we’re going to truck into Nashville, and this is on July 12th.
Save that date, because everybody’s invited. It’s going to be at a big venue where there’ll be room for everybody, and they’re going to be real superstars of their area, like a Gordon Chang, who is probably the greatest expert on China.
He’s going to be asking the candidates questions on foreign policy, not some journalist like me. Actually, I’ll be the host, but I’m going to be completely neutral. I’m just going to introduce people. That’s it.
Gulbransen: So what you’re saying is a real debate where it’s going to be pretty hard for a candidate to basically answer, give a bumper-sticker answer for a question, and then somehow let that slide. We often have whole campaigns by vapid individuals who have very little between their ears that are bumper-sticker campaigns to repeat what everybody else says.
Simon: And that’s up to them. I think that we have some candidates in this who are pretty smart. And the other thing is, it just gets away from the journalistic bias that … because any of these debates, it’s just, journalists try to show off, or either worse than just show off, tilt the election, and screw the public. This is trying to inform the public.
So we’re going to bring in someone like a Jay Bhattacharya or a Scott Atlas to ask the medical questions, the COVID questions, and the things that people really need to know. And so the idea of this is this is going to be here in Nashville, a pilot for what The Epoch Times hopes is going to be a new national trend for how to have a political debate away from journalists, and into experts and into the truth. Let’s hope. Good luck to us. But July 12th is the date. Be there or be square.
Gulbransen: Well, I look forward to it. I know I will be there. And I believe Michael as well.
Simon: He will. And this is all the groups, we want to get all the conservative groups together on this. One of the mistakes that everybody makes is, oh, it’s us, but not them.
It’s that famous joke from [Monty Python’s] The Life of Brian: “Are you the Judean Liberation Front?” “No, we’re the People’s Front of Judea.” Enough of that stuff.
Gulbransen: There was a great, also a more recent one, which, I thought The Life of Brian was hilarious. There was a more recent, I don’t know, about 10 years ago in South Park, they go forward into the future, and there are three groups of atheists left in the South Park episode. And the only thing they’re fighting over is what to name themselves. So, yeah, I get that point. Well, that’ll be fun. July 12th.
Simon: The local host is the Nashville Republican Women.
Gulbransen: Nashville Republican Women.
Simon: And then The Epoch Times, of course, in Nashville will be streaming it live to the internet. And already some groups are going to have listening parties, like up in Westhaven.
Listen to the interview:
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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 “Roger Simon” by Roger Simon. Background Photo “Nashville Republican Women Podium” by Nashville Republican Women.
