Live from Music Row Tuesday 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 official guest host Aaron Gulbransen in-studio to discuss his nationwide story regarding Tennessee’s National Guardsmen losing pay as Governor Bill Lee remains silent.
Leahy: I want to get an update on this other story. It’s very interesting how you broke this story here in Tennessee and now it’s become a national story.
Gulbransen: Right.
Leahy: And what’s happened is this: The Tennessee National Guard has followed the Department of Defense directive, which is to discharge any member of the Tennessee National Guard who has not received a COVID-19 vaccine. And the deadline for this was June 30.
Gulbransen: Right.
Leahy: Now, as our own Neil W. McCabe has reported, the chaptering out of people that don’t meet that standard happens at the state level, but also money stops being paid to these guys. They haven’t gotten vaccinated by June 30th. Tell us where everything stands right now here in Tennessee.
Gulbransen: So I’m in, of course, regular close contact multiple times a day with our sources on the subject, and the pay has been slow.
Leahy: When you say our sources, you’re talking about members of the Tennessee National Guard who have refused to take the COVID vaccine?
Gulbransen: Exactly.
Leahy: And have not complied with the June 30th deadline set by the very woke Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. And the steps in the process are, if you don’t comply, they begin the separation process. But it takes a while for that to happen. The first thing that’s supposed to stop is payment. Have these guys been paid?
Gulbransen: No, they have not.
[Editor’s Note: All Tennessee National Guard members were paid on June 30, 2020, but going forward those soldiers who did not comply with the COVID-19 mandate by June 30 have been put on non-pay status.]
Leahy: Well, these soldiers, male and female.
Gulbransen: And the other interesting thing is what happens a little bit later, right, is because technically, you have – and for the life of me, I don’t understand Governor Lee’s response on this, because he’s focusing only on the second group in his remarks, which is people who have applied for exemptions.
Leahy: Who is the other group?
Gulbransen: Medical exemptions as well as religious exemptions. Well, they’re pending, so they’re technically not fired yet because the exemptions haven’t been rejected yet by the Department of Defense officially.
Leahy: But the Department of Defense has rejected virtually everything.
Gulbransen: They have only granted 200 nationwide.
Leahy: Out of, like, 40,000?
Gulbransen: Yeah, that’s just on the National Guard side, we’re talking. So what is really puzzling about Governor Lee’s response and when he talks about it in his rhetoric on it, is he’s completely ignoring these Guardsmen that are outright refusing, which is the bigger group of them.
Leahy: And not requesting exemptions.
Gulbransen: Right. Because they know that they’re not going to get their exemptions granted. So why would you go through the extra paperwork, go pay a doctor extra money, all these other things that you have to go through when you put in the exemption?
Leahy: Now, let me just stop and pause for a moment.
Gulbransen: Yes, sir.
Leahy: About 10 percent of the Tennessee National Guard, I think it was like 400 members, have refused to take the vaccine. Some subset of that has applied for exemptions.
Gulbransen: Yes.
Leahy: What is that number, do you know? It’s like a couple of hundred, or maybe 100?
Gulbransen: It’s far less. The estimates I’ve heard is a few score, maybe 80 or so.
Leahy: Okay, so less than 100?
Gulbransen: Yes.
Leahy: That means over 300, roughly, if these estimates are correct, have simply refused and aren’t asking for exemptions. Governor Lee has done nothing to help them, from what I can tell.
Gulbransen: No, and he hasn’t scheduled a meeting to talk with people to really get their take on the issue. I’ve talked to legislators that are frustrated about their inability to get a meeting with the governor.
The sense that I have gotten from my conversations with multiple people in the General Assembly is that Lee is terrified of the Biden administration cutting off the spigot to the National Guard – under that scenario …
Leahy: Terrified?
Gulbransen: They say terrified. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: Governor Lee is terrified of Joe Biden?
Gulbransen: That is the sense I’ve gotten, yes.
Leahy: (Laughs) That’s not good. Governor Lee, by the way, if you’re listening, come on in and just tell us if you’re terrified of Joe Biden cutting the spigot off for National Guard.
Gulbransen: He’s not answering comment on us.
Leahy: But also there was, last week, a number of Guardsmen went to his office, requesting a meeting. He hasn’t done it?
Gulbransen: Nope.
Leahy: He could have done any number of things. Number one, he could have sent a letter to the adjutant general who runs the National Guard and said, don’t fire these guys, and pay them.
And if the feds don’t pay them, the state will pay them. Which they could do. There’s a budget surplus, very large. But he hasn’t done that. He hasn’t joined the lawsuit that several states have to oppose this mandate. He hasn’t done that.
Gulbransen: And the attorney general, the current attorney general, and as well as one of the frontrunners, as we hear, Brandon Gibson, who’s the state COO, has refused to comment on that either.
Leahy: The current attorney general, Herb Slatery.
Gulbransen: Yes. His office will not comment on whether or not they will do a lawsuit.
Leahy: General Slatery said he was leaving. His term ends August 31. The word is that Brandon Gibson, the center-left chief operating officer of the state, is the person that Governor Lee wants to name as attorney general.
Governor Lee has no constitutional authority here, but the practice has been the constitutional authority lies with the state Supreme Court and whoever they pick is the attorney general. But it’s been a practice, if you will, that the governor’s pick gets rubber-stamped. This is all not good.
Gulbransen: No, it’s not. I would say their lack of desire to actually say something helpful to these Guardsmen is very concerning.
Listen to the discussion:
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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.
