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 investigative reporter for One America News, Neil W. McCabe to the newsmaker line to discuss the elusive Ron DeSantis, Kari Lake’s media savvy, and Liz Cheney’s loss.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line right now by the great Neil W. McCabe, our former Washington correspondent and national political editor. He’s moved up in the world.
He’s now with One America News Network. He’s a guy tracking Governor Ron DeSantis. Has there been a Ron DeSantis sighting yet, Neil?
McCabe: I’ll tell you one thing that’s great about Ron DeSantis, but bad for Neil W. McCabe, is the guy is never in the Tallahassee swamp. If you look at the datelines on all the press conferences and all the stories about DeSantis, he’s all over the state, but he’s never here. But I hope to track him down soon.
Remember, they have the August 23 primaries here. And because DeSantis and Marco Rubio do not have challengers in the primary, they’re worried that the turnout won’t be so big. And the problem there is that the school board elections are also on August 23rd, and so they’re worried that conservatives will stay home.
School boards are a very big deal here in Florida, as they try to secretly kill your grandchildren and turn your boys into girls and your girls into boys.
Leahy: Exactly. By the way, Ron DeSantis, on Sunday night – and our own Neil Jones with The Arizona Sun Times was there at the event – [DeSantis] was at a rally for Kari Lake and Blake Masters. You’ve actually interviewed all of those folks.
You interviewed Kari Lake when you were with us, and you interviewed Blake Masters. I think that’s a dynamic combination, Ron DeSantis and Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for governor in Arizona. Your thoughts, Neil W. McCabe?
McCabe: Yes, you’re spot-on. DeSantis is really coming into his own, especially since they basically forced Trump out of office.
But what’s interesting about Kari Lake is that she has become not just a national conservative leader, but she’s also becoming that leader in the Arizona Republican Party that they never had.
Kelli Ward is the party chairwoman, and she’s fantastic, and she took the wood to McCain. But Kari Lake is different. She’s got charisma, she’s got energy.
And because she worked as a reporter for 20 years, she doesn’t take those clowns seriously. And she routinely calls them out. It’s like, I don’t know if you ever bought a car with a guy who used to sell cars.
And the way they treat the salesman, it’s like because they know the salesman. They’re not afraid of the salesman. They know the salesman’s secret. Kari Lake is not intimidated by these reporters. She knows they’re all stooges, myself included.
Leahy: Last time you were out here was a couple of days after the FBI raid of Donald Trump’s private residence in Mar-a-Lago. We joked at the time that the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago just a couple of days after you moved to Florida.
Then Scott Perry, the congressman from Washington – from Pennsylvania, who also lives in Washington, D.C. – had his phone seized by the FBI. Did you go back to D.C. for a period of time?
McCabe: (Chuckles) For the record, when I was a combat historian in the new Iraq back in 2009, I interviewed Lieutenant Colonel Scott Perry when he was an aviation battalion commander for the Pennsylvania National Guard.
And then I obviously caught up with him when I covered Capitol Hill for Breitbart and for other fine publications. I interviewed Scott Perry at CPAC in Dallas. So I think we’re starting to connect the dots.
Leahy: There’s a pattern here. There’s a pattern here, Neil W. McCabe I think people should be careful. Watch out for Neil W. McCabe. The FBI is tracking him.
McCabe: Yeah. Grab those SIM cards.
Leahy: It was so sad, so sad, to see, Liz Cheney lost by 37 points last night in Wyoming. In her speech in which she conceded, but not endorsed, Harriet Hageman, who really just won by more than a two-to-one margin. I don’t know if you saw this, Liz Cheney compared herself to – wait for it – Abraham Lincoln. Did you see that?
McCabe: Yes. And as you know, I grew up outside the Boston area and I’ve lost my accent. But I will say that (affecting strong Boston accent) Liz Cheney last night was breaking my heart, and it is a scar that will never heal.
Leahy: (Laughs) What does she do next?
McCabe: If she’s delusional enough to run against Trump in 2024, then God bless her. I think the best move for her is to just run for a House seat in Northern Virginia, where she’s been living for the last 30 years of her life.
And so it’s just a more natural fit. It’s an interesting point when you realize she turned down the opportunity to be on the House Natural Resources Committee – which is basically where energy and western Congressmen go to take care of their state’s interests – she secured a position on the Armed Services Committee, which really doesn’t do a lot for people in Wyoming but it does a lot for the Beltway bandits who live in her neighborhood in Northern Virginia.
Carmichael: Which party would she run for?
McCabe: Well, it’s interesting because she could run as a Republican just to sort of pull, like, a “man bites dog” headline. (Laughter) But who knows what she will be up to?
I think what she’ll do is she’ll continue to be that sort of left-wing Republican, sort of like, we’ve had them through the years: the apostate Republican who gets great press and goes nowhere with the voters.
Leahy: Crom had a suggestion that she might form a new party, run for president in 2024.
Carmichael: That’s because she compared herself to Abe Lincoln.
Leahy:Â His idea was to call it the Crybaby Party.
Carmichael: And send out CB oil.
Leahy: (Laughs) What do you think of that thought?
McCabe: I was watching this, and when she was going through her sort of complaints, it seemed to me like she had asked for the wine list. (Leahy laughs)Â
Leahy: Did you see that in her concession speech, the former president of ABC is the guy that orchestrated all of that and the backdrop in Jackson, Wyoming, where she’s trying to look Lincolnesque. Are you kidding me? He’s the guy that was doing all the theatrics for the J6 committee.
McCabe: Let’s think about this. The J6 committee has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, not just on an investigation, but on production and communication. And what have they come up with? They’ve got bupkis (Yiddish slang term meaning “nothing”).
No one yet has connected Trump with the guys who crashed the gates and broke through the doors. And unless they have that – it’s like when they break into Mar-a-Lago, I was thinking they better find some nuclear codes there.
You don’t do that. Even other European countries, which have strange relationships with democracy, don’t pull these stunts. Even in France, they don’t raid each other like this.
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 “Kari Lake” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Photo “Liz Cheney” by Liz Cheney.Â
