Tom Cotton and Bill Hagerty Discuss Taking Jobs Back from China and Defunding Schools Using The 1619 Project as Curriculum

Live from Music Row Friday 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 Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton and Tennessee U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty to the studio.

At the end of the third hour, Cotton and Hagerty talked about taking jobs back from China and bringing those jobs back to the United States. They also added how important it was to stop the anti-American propaganda in schools and advocated that there should be no federal funding for schools that use the 1619 project from The New York Times as part of their curriculum.

Leahy: In the studio with Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, former ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty, and of course the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael. Crom, you have a question for our guests.

Carmichael: Bill during the break we were talking about just what an adversary China is. And you served as an ambassador of Japan. What experiences did you have there that you can talk about that demonstrate just what a danger China is to us?

Hagerty: Senator Cotton knows this very well also. The United States has the greatest compliment based in Japan than any other place in the world. And the reason is that we are staring down this threat. We deal with North Korea and China every day.

The Chinese threat is massive from a military standpoint, and from an economic standpoint. Militarily they are out crushing coral reefs paving them and making giant stationary aircraft carriers essentially all along the busiest sea lanes in the nation of the South China Sea there. These are very aggressive moves that we have got to stand up against and we are.

From a diplomatic standpoint, look no further than the WHO the World Health Organization. They ought to call it the CHO because of the Chinese influence there. President Trump has been absolutely to stand up to them and call for reform. They were complicit with spreading this pandemic around the world. They failed us completely. They are under the influence of China.

I am thankful that President Trump has withdrawn us from the WHO. That’s the right message to send. And economically they do everything they can to steal our secrets. To cheat against us with highly subsidized labor. They are predatory on every level.

I’ve stood up to them and looked them right in the eye. I know how to hit China where it hurts. We’ve got to get our jobs back. We can’t be dependent on China for our antibiotics, high technology. We need to make “Made in the USA” the theme of America again.

Carmichael: Those jobs went over there because it was cheaper to produce over there than produce over here. It’s just economics. It’s not necessarily the wise thing to do in the long term. But it was done for those reasons. What policies do we need to change here to make us more competitive as a country so manufacturers want to invest and come back here?

Hagerty: One of the key reasons that President Trump has endorsed me for this U.S. Senate seat is because of my understanding of China. That’s also the reason he put me on the White House Recovery Task Force right now. To help us get this economy turned around and our jobs back from China. And we’ve already started. We reduced the tax rate from 35 percent down to 21 percent.

The corporate tax rate was the highest in the world before this happened in the Trump administration. We’ve gone through one wave of deregulation. We’re going through another. We need to make America the most attractive place to invest capital anywhere. I got a full plan on my website at teamhagerty.com. But I want to see us pull these supply chains back faster. And we need to get these jobs back to the USA and no more dependence on China.

Leahy: Back to the issue of American productivity. One of the concerns that I’ve had. I’ll start with Senator Cotton on this and then ask Ambassador Hagerty to follow up on it. One of my concerns is our educational system and quite frankly the propaganda and the anti-American propaganda that our kids are being taught. And Senator Cotton, you made news again! (Chuckles) It seems like every time I turn around  Senator Cotton is making news.

And you made news again. You suggested that there should be no federal funding for schools that use the 1619 project from The New York Times as part of their curriculum. It’s been widely debunked by almost every historian as left-wing propaganda. Tell us about that a little bit.

Cotton: I will tell you about that but I want to go back to one point Crom made about jobs going to China. Those jobs didn’t just go to China. It didn’t just happen. It was the result of bad and failed policies for 30 years that allowed China to put tariffs and quotas on our products to undercut us in international economic competition in various ways.

And we didn’t defend our own interest and defend our jobs. And Bill’s experience both as ambassador to Japan and in business is one of the reasons that President Trump has endorsed him. He knows that what is the result of a failed policy can be turned around by better policies. That we can turn around our economy and bring back more of those manufacturing jobs and better policies.

Just like Mike, we can protect our children from having their minds filled with anti-American rot by better policies and by not allowing federal funding to be put towards the teaching of the so-called 1619 project as American history.

America was not founded in 1619. America was founded in 1776. We are founded explicitly on the proposition that all men are created equal. And we have struggled to live up to that proposition ever since. But we have been so better than any other nation ever has done. And we ought not to let The New York Times teach history to our children.

Hagerty: Amen. And that goes back to Common Core too of which I’m fully against. We need to let the decisions for what our kids are going to be doing being made locally. The parents I think are in the best position to decide. And local school districts should too. This stuff should not be permeating from New York City and The New York Times.

Carmichael: Now what about charter schools because President Trump has made it very clear that especially in our larger cities due to the powers of the teachers’ unions that they are going to change. So he’s an advocate of competition and choice. Where are you on that Bill?

Hagerty: I am in absolute agreement with President Trump. I think competition will introduce a lot into the system. We need to see our school system to be responsive to our kids of today. We need to be teaching them the right things and not the propaganda that we are getting.

We certainly don’t need common core here in Tennessee. I trust the local decision-makers more than anything and the parents most of all. But I think if the dollars can follow the kids we’ll have a much more competitive system and better results.

Cotton: Especially if you look at what’s happening right now with schools struggling to reopen. We’ve got to give parents every tool they want. Charter schools are a very important tool. In Arkansas, we’ve opened up a lot of new charter schools since Republicans took over the state government. And it’s made education better in charter schools. It’s made education better in traditional public schools as well.

But right now when schools are struggling to reopen and parents are trying to find a way to get their kids back into the classroom and back onto the playing field. Especially the single parents who really need the schools to open so they can keep working and put food on the table for their kids. I think we have to support as many choices for our parents and their kids education as we can.

Listen to the full third 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. 

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