Live from Music Row Thursday 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 by Tennessee Congressman (R) David Kustoff to the newsmakers line to discuss his political background and the differences he sees in the Democrats and Republicans across the isle.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line by Congressman David Kustoff who represents Tennessee’s eighth congressional district. Good morning Congressman Kustoff.
Kustoff: Good morning, sir. Thank you for having me this morning.
Leahy: Well, we’re delighted you could make it here. Now the eighth district covers parts of Shelby County and goes all the way up North to Union City then over a little bit to Carroll County, Weakley County, and Henry County. And that includes Jackson. That’s a pretty expansive geographic territory.
Kustoff: Hey, it really is. It’s a big territory. It’s a great district. And I’m honored to serve it. I’ve got as you said a part of Shelby County and it’s just such an interesting diverse district with a lot of different interests. But you know when you think about it for years and years and years and years, it was a solidly lead Democrat district, maybe a blue dog district, but my predecessor Stephen Fincher flipped the district about 10 years ago. And it’s a pretty good solid conservative Republican district. And I’m honored to serve it.
Leahy: So you are I think a lifelong Memphian or in that area. You went to undergraduate school there law school. You had an interesting job back at the end of the George W. Bush administration. You were the U.S. attorney for Western Tennessee, is that right?
Kustoff: I was. For a lawyer, I got to tell you it’s not the best job you can have it’s one of the best jobs you can have. I was fortunate that I inherited a really good office with career solid prosecutors. But I’ll tell you thing with President Bush, the only thing that he asked of me or any U.S attorney he said you could structure your office and make your priorities wherever you want it to take it whether it’s violent crime or drugs.
But the only thing I ask is you make the top priority anti-terrorism. Which from George W. Bush that’s probably exactly what you would had expected. But a great boss. I had really good attorney generals and it was an honor to get to do that job. I’ve had a very interesting public service career.
Leahy: As U.S. Attorney, is your boss the Attorney General? Is that your direct boss? Who’s your boss?
Kustoff: Well it is. Essentially you have two bosses the attorney general, who do I report to, and the president. And with the president obviously whoever the president is when you’re appointed and at you are confirmed by the United States Senate just like the judges or any other presidential nominee, you serve at the pleasure of the president. So the bottom line is If you’re doing a good job or a bad job and the president says it’s time to time to check out then it’s time to go.
And so I did that job for a couple of plus years and I left to go back to practice law before the 2008 presidential election. But I’ve got to tell you serving under President Bush, I got to serve under Alberto Gonzales, who of course now is the Dean of the law school at Belmont. And I treasure that time. And Michael Mukasey who was a federal judge resigned from the federal judgeship in order to be the attorney general. And he’s a frequent guest on Fox News. A brilliant lawyer and brilliant jurist. So it’s really the opportunity of a lifetime for a lawyer if you get to do it.
Leahy: So you were elected to the Congress representing the eighth congressional district back in November of 2016. And re-elected in 2018 and 2020, Now you’re in the minority. What’s that like?
Kustoff:Â Well, it’s not much fun. I didn’t realize how spoiled I was when I was elected in 2016 and you brought that up serving with the Republican president, the Republican majority in the Senate, and the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. And we were able to get some things done. I think President Trump did a terrific job his whole four years almost. And I think if you take his time and divided up it into almost two terms the first three years and the last year with COVID.
But we were able to get so much done. And one reason I think that we had such a good strong vibrant economy is the bill that we passed when President Trump led the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And that was major tax reductions all across the board for individuals and for businesses. And it started an economic boom. It started a job boom. You’d think almost a year ago long before COVID really hit we had record low unemployment all across the board.
And a big part of that is because those first two years of the Trump administration when I served in the majority in the House of Representatives, we were able to get so much done. And if you think about the last couple of years and so little has gotten done under Pelosi’s leadership. Now I’m over answering your question but I really think in two years we’ve got a great chance in November of 2022 to take the House of Representatives back.
And there are a number of reasons, but part of the reason is exactly what you just asked, the Democrats haven’t gotten anything done and the stuff that they’re about to try to cram through the throats of Americans and voters across the country, I think voters in 2022 are going to repel against it.
Leahy: Let me ask you this. A lot of members of the House who are Republicans are people with substantive careers. They’ve been in business and have been successful. They’ve had extensive careers in law. They have not spent their entire time being political animals and being pure ideologues. I get the impression that this Congress in particular and particularly under Nancy Pelosi’s leadership are the kind of people who are Democrats in Congress, they’re kind of this is I’m going to use my words. They’re not your words. But they seem to me to just be a bunch of ideological lunatics who lack common sense. Not your words. But go ahead.
Kustoff: So the committee that I’m on is the financial services committee. It’s a prestigious committee and its banking, its insurance, and the Federal Reserve. And you know to your point, the Republicans sit on one side of the room and the Democrats sit on the other side of the room during the committee hearings. I look at the Republican congressmen who are on our side of the committee and these folks to your point, they’ve all led something.
They started their own businesses. They were leaders of their community bank. They were leaders in the insurance World. They owned real estate. They developed real estate, communities, and office buildings. The whole gamut. And I look at the other side and I don’t want to disparage everybody…Â (Leahy chuckles)
Leahy: You can let me do that, but go ahead. (Kustoff chuckles)
Kustoff: It really is a dichotomy. Go back to the Obama years. What did he do before he got elected to the Senate? He was a community organizer. I mean that’s kind of the blueprint for some of their folks. You can name her as one of the most prominent members of Congress on the Democrat side who was a bartender before she got elected to Congress.
Leahy: Now you are talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who Congressman Burton says she’s a nice person and she is I’m sure she is a nice person, but she doesn’t know anything about how a business runs or really have any understanding of economics at all. And she just seems to have is a bunch of lunatic ideas in my view that the Democratic party has embraced now.
Kustoff: Well, you look at that. Now every bartender who is listening is going to be mad. I’m not saying anything bad about bartenders.
Leahy: It’s possible for a bartender or for anybody in the working class. I mean you certainly can have a view you but it needs to be a view based on fact and based on reality. And that’s not what we’re seeing from her that’s for sure.
Kustoff: Well to your point if you look at their leaders in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, now AOC who you just talked about, she’s not in a leadership position on their side, but she has more social media followers and more notoriety than probably any of them. So you’ve got her in the House. You’ve got Bernie Sanders in the Senate who didn’t do anything before he got elected to office for the business community.
And it’s their ideas. AOC and Bernie Sanders are propelling the Democratic Party. And they’ve co-opted Biden who tries to position himself to be a moderate down the middle guy from the Democratic Party. But they’ve co-opted it and they’ve moved that party so far left that I don’t think they can come back to the center because they control it.
Leahy: If you can stay with us through the break Congressman Kustoff. I want to talk about this one-point-nine-trillion-dollar blue city blue State bailout called Coronavirus Bill in a bit.
Listen to the full first hour here:
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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.
