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 Michael Bloomberg’s recent comments regarding teachers’ unions and whether or not the Democrat Party will remain intact.
Leahy: Michael Bloomberg. You know who he is, right?
Gulbransen: I sadly had the distinction of actually working on one of his campaigns in 2005, when he was a Republican, mind you. But yes. Yes, he was running for re-election as mayor of New York City as a Republican.
Leahy: You worked on his campaign.
Gulbransen: Yes.
Leahy:Â What exactly did you do?
Gulbransen: I was – New York City, it’s kind of funny, a geographically tiny population – was regional political director, basically.
Leahy: And so did you hang with Michael?
Gulbransen: I had the opportunity to, but I did not take a lot of advantage. He’s not a pleasant person to be around.
Leahy: Really?
Gulbransen: No. I mean, he’s very brusque. His public persona is pretty close to his private one.
Leahy: But you took the money. (Laughs)
Gulbransen: Of course I did. I was young and stupid. And I do want to emphasize he was a Republican. He was the only Republican running in New York City. And there you go.
Leahy: But you never met with him, or you did meet with him?
Gulbransen: No. And if I did, I would have yelled at him about the size of diet soda, as well as him banning cigar smoking in public parks in New York City.
All this really bad stuff and the gun stuff happened after that. We’re talking like, 2009, it started happening. He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing …
Leahy: All these things. I didn’t know about you, Aaron.
Gulbransen: I am like an onion, right?
Leahy: (Chuckles) So our story, by the great Susan Berry: “Michael Bloomberg Blames Teachers’ Unions for Keeping Money Flowing to Traditional Government Schools and Away from Charter Schools.”
Crom Carmichael, who will be here tomorrow, our original all-star panelist, a big fan of charter schools, which are basically public schools, but they’re not operated in the normal fashion. They’re operated independently.
Here’s the story. Former Democrat, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says teachers’ unions were responsible for keeping schools locked down during the pandemic, a move that has enabled a mass exit of students from traditional government schools throughout the country.
He thinks this is a bad thing. He’s the founder of Bloomberg News, sort of a left-wing business news operation. And basically, he says nearly 1.3 million students have left public schools since the pandemic began.
He finds this “deeply disturbing because it seems to have escaped public outcry.” I don’t know. I understand why they’ve left. I’m not sure if charter schools are the solution.
Crom seems to think so. I think either home schooling or private schools. Your thoughts on this, homeschooled Aaron Gulbransen?
Gulbransen: Remember, I did all of the above, with the exception of a charter school. But yeah, I think it is an all-the-above approach, that you need charter schools, I think is a component of it.
It’s interesting to note that Bloomberg and his commentary on this is not being a leftist ideologue and has reverted to, I guess, a business … I mean, that’s completely, the voting with their feet, 1.3 million students leaving public schools, is an easy business observation to note.
Leahy: You will be on Wednesday. Corey DeAngelis will be with you, right?
Gulbransen: Yes.
Leahy: So, Corey actually commented on this. Do you see that [a tweet from DeAngelis contained in Dr. Susan Berry’s article]? “Underperforming private schools shut down; underperforming government schools get more money?”
That’s the Biden way.
Gulbransen: Right.
Leahy: What Bloomberg is trying to say, I think, is oh, hey, teachers’ unions, be careful, because if people exit either the public schools or the publicly funded charter schools, your power is going to decline. That’s what he’s really saying here.
Gulbransen: The question is, does their power ever decline in the Democrat party?
Leahy: I think their power will increase in the Democrat party. But what will happen to the power of the Democrat party? Will the Democrat party become not a major party in the future? Will it become sort of a grouping of a left-wing minority in the country? Your thoughts, Aaron Gulbransen?
Gulbransen: That’s the real question, right? So it looks like they get destroyed in the elections in the House, in November. The Senate is a different thing, I can expand upon that another time. I think Republicans will take the Senate. But the question is, at some point do the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezses …
Leahy: You got to do it like this. You ready? (in florid Spanish accent) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Gulbransen: There we go. You got to say it the right way or else you’ll offend her political delicate sensibility from the Bronx or Queens or wherever she’s from.
Leahy: She’s from Westchester.
Gulbransen: Yes, I know. That’s exactly right.
Leahy: Westchester County, for those of you who aren’t [familiar], is the Williamson County, if you will.
Gulbransen: It’s very rich, and she grew up a child of privilege.
Leahy: It’s Williamson County-plus, basically just north of New York City.
Gulbransen: Add a factor of two to that, and that’s about right. But the question is, do people like her and the rest of the so-called Squad decide? You know what? We’re tired of trying to win Democrat elections. It’s time to have our own split-off party.
Or they go after Democrats that are not sufficiently Marxist for them, enough, that they start winning these primaries and they push themselves into permanent minority status.
Leahy: I think that is distinctly a possibility these days.
Gulbransen: The issue would be, if we had a free and fair press in this country …
Leahy: Which, by the way, we have a free press in Tennessee. Why? Because of The Tennessee Star.
Gulbransen: Yes, exactly.
Leahy: There’s nobody else in Tennessee that reports seriously on news and political information that is free and fair from a conservative perspective. We are it.
Gulbransen: But if we had a free and fair press, and some of the conservative press is just entertainment, people will be more aware of this going on.
Leahy: We’ll have more when we get back.
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.
