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 national political correspondent for One America News, Neil W. McCabe, to the newsmaker line to weigh in on DeSantis sending illegal migrants to the liberal enclave of Martha’s Vineyard and his ability to reboot national politics and the news cycle.
Leahy: We are joined right now on the newsmaker line by Top Gov tracker for One America News Network, the man who covers everything Ron DeSantis, based now in Tallahassee, Florida, Mr. Neil W. McCabe. Good morning, Neil.
McCabe: Michael, very good to be with you, sir. Good morning, Crom.
Carmichael: Good morning.
Leahy: No one is better suited to have a background on Governor DeSantis sending 50 illegal migrants to Martha’s Vineyard up in that sanctuary state of Massachusetts – the state where you were born and bred, my friend – than you, Neil W. McCabe.
Give us your reaction to all the events surrounding the transport of 50 illegal migrants from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard – the 48 hours of respite they had there and the sudden movement by Charlie Baker, the RINO governor of Massachusetts, who sent the National Guard in there to swoop them out of that liberal white enclave and put them on a military base back on the mainland of Massachusetts. Your thoughts, Neil W. McCabe?
McCabe: Well, Michael, first let me say that unlike the posh residence of Martha’s Vineyard, I was born with no bread. (Leahy chuckles) And so those guys, that is a swanky place, if you’ve ever been to Martha’s Vineyard. Obama has a $12 million house there and that is a cottage compared to some of the other states.
And when I say estate, I mean estates. The good and the great live in Martha’s Vineyard. But there are 50 people who are not living on Martha’s Vineyard, and those are the 50 migrants that were bussed and ferried to Joint Base Cape Cod, but it’s the old Otis Air Force Base combined with Camp Edwards.
In fact, I lived there when I was stationed on Coast Guard cutter Campbell out of New Bedford. Basically, it’s sort of a post-war military base that was closed and then sort of kept alive as sort of a reserve base, and then housing for the Coast Guard.
Those migrants, they didn’t have a chance. They had less than 48 hours, and then the buses arrived, and they said, get in. And so people are suing now. There’s a group called Lawyers for Civil Rights that claims to represent at least 30 of these border migrants.
They say that DeSantis misled them and basically tricked them into getting onto the plane. But I wonder – if these guys have legal status to the United States, and they’re hanging out in Martha’s Vineyard, then when a guy in uniform shows up in a military or state trooper uniform shows up and tells you to get on a bus, why did they get on the bus? Why would they leave Martha’s Vineyard?
Leahy: That’s a very good point. Why don’t they sue Charlie Baker, the governor of Massachusetts, who called out the National Guard if they’ve got legal standing. They should be on Martha’s Vineyard today, sipping wine and eating cheese.
Carmichael: Neil, I read reports where there were actually employers on Martha’s Vineyard ready to employ them.
McCabe: Oh, I’m sure. I mean, those dishes aren’t going to wash themselves. (Leahy laughs)
Carmichael: I’m just saying that there were jobs there that these people that the migrants could have taken which would have put them in a much better position than wherever they were before in either Texas or Florida, where they’ve been flooded so much with migrants that they had no work to do.
McCabe: The dishwashing, nanny, and landscaping opportunities on Martha’s Vineyard are fantastic, compared to wherever they were in Texas. Even Austin.
Leahy: Yes, they were in Texas. They had a couple of days in Florida, and then from there, they went up to Martha’s Vineyard. Now, have you got any reaction from the DeSantis camp from these lawsuits.
And the lawsuits for the migrants are really designed to get a federal judge to say, you can’t send any more illegal migrants from Florida to these blue states. That’s what that’s designed for.
But what about this Democrat political hack who’s the sheriff of Bexar County, Texas, at San Antonio? By the way, Bexar County is the same county where 53 illegal migrants baked to death in a truck. That same county.
Instead of really going after the folks involved there, this sheriff is now trying to come up with a Democrat talking point. He had a press conference, by the way, and said, oh, yeah, we’re investigating Ron DeSantis.
They couldn’t say what federal law had been violated. What do you make of that? How does Team DeSantis respond to all those allegations?
McCabe: Well, the Left is great at sort of cooking up these fake outraged complaints and lawsuits. Literally, they drove Sarah Palin out of office as governor of Alaska just because of the weight of all of the complaints and lawsuits. And there was no legal way in Alaska for her to raise money and defend herself the way she would have to.
And so basically, they hounded her out of office, and then they complained that she quit. This is what they do. They put up these stooges. They give them a hat and a badge, and they say, you go in front of a camera there and you tell ’em what a rat Ryan DeSantis is, and he does the job he’s paid to do, and God love him.
DeSantis was at a press conference yesterday in Sarasota, and he’s like, these guys that we picked up and sent to Martha’s Vineyard, they were homeless, they were hungry, they were destitute, they had been abandoned by the Biden administration.
Basically, the Biden team, just basically waved these guys in and said “good luck.” And so these guys are eating sticks and rocks, and DeSantis puts them on a plane and sends them to Martha’s Vineyard. He’s the villain. Listen, if DeSantis offered me a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, I’d take it. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: You’re putting your hand up. You want to go to Martha’s Vineyard, for free!
McCabe: Listen, I’ve seen Martha’s Vineyard from the coast and wondered what was it like. There are four dozen Venezuelan migrants who have enjoyed Martha’s Vineyard more than I ever have.
Leahy: And you’re a native of that sanctuary state, Massachusetts?
McCabe: I am a native of the Bay State, Michael, although I have lost my accent.
Carmichael: Neil, what do you think the political implications are of the way that these very white Democrat liberals have reacted?
McCabe: I’ll tell you, the genius of DeSantis or one of the facets of his multi-faceted genius is he knows how to reboot national politics. Who else on the Republican side aside from Donald J. Trump has the ability to reboot national politics, the news cycles?
There was a rumor that he was sending a plane full of migrants to Delaware, and there were like 200 press people waiting on an airstrip in Delaware, for a plane that never arrived. Who else is doing that? We saw that in four years of the Trump administration – no one was catching arrows for Trump.
Everyone was hiding under their desk. The left-wing staffers and consultants running the Republican party have no answer for abortion, and guns. It’s like they don’t know what to do.
They are completely bewildered. If it wasn’t for gas prices they wouldn’t even know what to make a commercial about, right? DeSantis suddenly put the Republican on offense again.
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.
Background Photo “Martha’s Vineyard” by Kim Briggs. CC BY 2.0.
