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 in the studio to comment upon Donald Trump’s run for 2024 presidency, the possibility of candidates, and the prodding of Joe Biden’s failures.
Leahy: In the studio, the original all-star panelist, Crom Carmichael. Crom, I would like to get your assessment. Well, the big news officially last night, Donald J. Trump, the former president of the United States, announced he’s running again, went down to Mar-a-Lago.
His family was out there, and I want to get your reaction. I thought he was actually pretty good in terms of being on point, not whining about the 2020 election, which we’ve heard over and over and over again, and really took it to Joe Biden for being an awful, terrible, rotten president. I agree with that. Your thoughts, Crom Carmichael?
Carmichael: Well, it’s not so much what he said that matters here as much as what he has done. And that is he has put himself forward officially now as a candidate for the Republican nomination.
Leahy: So game on.
Carmichael: Well, yes, that’s right. Now, my sense of what that means is this. It’s going to be very hard for somebody to raise money and run against him who doesn’t already have money.
Leahy: Like Ron DeSantis. He’s got like $100 million plus.
Carmichael: I think it’s not a campaign against Trump, as like, for example, Mike Pence. I don’t know if you saw his interview, it was just terrible.
Leahy: Terrible.
Carmichael: And I don’t mean what he said was terrible. The interview is terrible. You sit there and watch it, and here’s the guy who (pauses) stops in between – what I did there.
Leahy: We should have a camera here.
Carmichael: But for the listeners, I stopped on purpose, because Mike Pence would be asked a question and he would wait. He would just sit there like he’s thinking deeply for three to five seconds before he’d answer the question, and the answer wasn’t much of an answer.
Leahy: It was like warm toast.
Carmichael: So he won’t go anywhere. Mike Pence won’t go anywhere even if he announces. He won’t go anywhere. Let’s just kind of run down the list of possibilities. I don’t think any of the people who ran last time, like Ted Cruz …
Leahy: I don’t think he’s going to run.
Leahy: No, Ted Cruz won’t run. Marco Rubio won’t run. None of the people who are currently in office now will run. Hogan might run – will get nowhere.
Leahy: The RINO Governor of Maryland. He’ll go nowhere.
Carmichael: He’ll go nowhere. But he’s not the governor anymore. So what I’m saying is he’s no longer in government. He may try to run, and he’ll get interviews on all of the left-leaning programs, and where none of his supporters will …
Leahy: Orange man bad.
Carmichael: Liz Cheney might run. And she will then get interviews on CNN, all the people who won’t give her money. She’ll get a lot of interviews. I don’t see her going anywhere. My sense of it is, if I had to predict what’s going to happen in the Republican primary, there will be a half-dozen other lower-level named people with no money and little name recognition who run and don’t get anywhere. And Ron DeSantis will continue to be the governor of Florida.
Leahy: And not announced for a period of time.
Carmichael: For a long period of time. He doesn’t need to announce until the fall.
Leahy: I agree with that. Why would he? There’s no benefit to it.
Carmichael: So what Trump will be doing between now and when the campaign actually picks up, is he’ll be opining on Biden’s policies, and that will make it difficult for Biden.
Leahy: I think that part of it is good in that sense. If he can get away from whining about how everybody’s mean to him, and if he can get away from attacking any Republican and just focus his fire on Joe Biden, that’s good.
Carmichael: And he can do one thing that would be fascinating.
Leahy: Tell me.
Carmichael: And that is he’ll start saying that Joe Biden won’t run because he’s a coward, doesn’t want to run against him again.
Leahy: He’s going to goad him again.
Carmichael: He will goad him into running again, which, to the great dismay of Gavin Newsom, Hillary Clinton – so all these people who hate Donald Trump are going to hate him even more.
Leahy: If you play this all out, could you possibly bear another Trump-Biden campaign?
Carmichael: I don’t think that’ll happen.
Leahy: Well, I couldn’t bear it.
Carmichael: Hey, if it turns out that they’re the nominees, we have no choice but to bear it.
Leahy: Well, I understand. I understand.
Carmichael: It’s a lot like most elections that we have. We have two candidates that we don’t particularly want.
Leahy: Either one, we have a Republican candidate, and then we have a Democrat machine, and they could pick up somebody who literally has an IQ of 60, and run them, and they could win.
Carmichael: Exactly.
Leahy: I mean, that’s what we got. That’s what happened in Pennsylvania. You had Fetterman with a stroke, and then you had, basically Katie Hobbs looks like she’s going to win in Arizona. She’s basically Fetterman without the stroke. You can’t tell that much of a difference. Yeah.
Carmichael: But focusing back on the presidential election, if Trump goads Biden into running again and he’ll goad him into it, saying that Biden can’t beat me. Yeah.
Leahy: Mano a mano.
Carmichael: It would be really interesting.
Leahy: I agree with that. Again, Trump has a lot of flaws in terms of, I don’t think the Gen Z folks are going to vote for him or single women are going to vote for him. But between now and September, if it’s a steady stream of Donald Trump out there whacking Joe Biden every single day, that will be fun.
Carmichael: And challenging him. Challenging him on his policies, and saying how he killed all these people from COVID, he ought to quit, he ought to resign. But no, he’s too big a coward. He won’t run again.
Leahy: Just hearing this, I’m starting to smile.
Carmichael: That part of it will be amusing for those of us who don’t like Biden.
Leahy: Which is basically virtually everybody in this listening audience.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this 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.
Mike Pompeo is expected to run in the presidential GOP primary. I expect Pence will back him , either immediately or when he himself drops out of the race. I don’t think Pence has expectations of winning the primary but people run for office for multiple reasons and winning the race is the usual but not the only reason