The Epoch Times’ Senior Editor Roger Simon on Success of Unconventional Debate for TN-5 Candidates Tuesday Evening

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 all-star panelist and The Epoch Times’ Editor-at-Large Roger Simon in-studio to reflect upon the successful and unconventional new debate style held at the downtown Nashville Masonic Lodge Tuesday evening.

Leahy: We are joined in-studio by all-star panelist, good friend, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist, founder of PJ Media, my former boss – when you had a little program at PJTV, what, 13-14 years ago, a long time ago, we were both in our teenage years.

Simon: I actually was a very precocious 9-year-old. (Chuckles)

Leahy: And also now Senior Editor-at-Large at The Epoch Times, Roger Simon. Good morning, Roger.

Simon: Well, good morning. I’m a little tired, but I’m here.

Leahy: Let me first publicly congratulate you and your wife Cheryl for the outstanding new format debate that was held. And you were talking to the folks at The Epoch Times, brought them in here for a debate on Tuesday.

Downtown Nashville at the Masonic Lodge and in a wonderful venue, very impressive venue. And you had a debate of the Republican, three of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination in the 5th Congressional.

Simon: Yeah, we invited five, but three showed.

Leahy: And the two that didn’t show, I never got a straight story from those as to why they exactly didn’t show up. One of them, Kurt Winstead, apparently accepted the invitation and then backed out. Is that right?

Simon: Yes. He accepted it so graphically that on Friday before, or Saturday, he actually said personally to some of our representatives, I’ll see you on Tuesday night, and then he flipped.

And I’ll tell you something, that tells you about what kind of congressperson this would be. There’s a great legal principle from 19th-century England. In Latin, they said, falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. If you lie about one thing, you’re going to lie about everything. So what we have here is someone who lied about something very interesting, because what we did wasn’t perfect. It couldn’t be. It was the first time anyone ever …

Leahy: Ever. An inspiration that sprang from the mind of your wife Cheryl, and from you.

Simon: Well, I took it, because when Cheryl said to me, you know, nobody ever debates with real experts asking questions rather than biased reporters, like Michael and me.

Leahy: Or Chris Wallace. We shouldn’t even be in the same category yet. (Chuckles)

Simon: And I said, that’s a very good idea. I said, does somebody want to do it? And I said, wait a minute, I work for the one company in this country that would do it, and that’s The Epoch Times, which, by the way, advertisement is the best newspaper in this country going away right now and is number three in the news apps to the vaunted, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. That’s phenomenal.

Leahy: That is phenomenal. What’s interesting about that, Roger, is you brought in, was it six or seven subject matter experts. They were very impressive. Gordon Chang on foreign policy, Hans von Spakovsky.

Simon: Hard to pronounce, but a great man.

Leahy: A great guy, and a Vanderbilt Law School grad from Huntsville, Alabama. Nice guy. And Carol Swain would be there our local hero

Simon: And our expert here.

But it was a very interesting format because you had the three candidates literally in the arena. Teddy Roosevelt talks about the man in the arena. It was an arena-type setting.

Simon: There is a funny thing I could share for you and your listeners. I wrote, of course, a preview of this thing for The Epoch Times.

And there were a lot of comments because people were very intrigued by this new approach. But the negative ones, the half dozen or so, all said how can you do this at a Mason Lodge?

I didn’t really know much about the Masons, but I noticed that among the Masons were people like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. I don’t get it, friends.

Leahy: I think Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk.

Simon: And Harry S. Truman, to make it more modern.

Leahy: I don’t know much about the Masons either. The lodge, it was a fabulous venue. I mean, you got there and you said, oh, this is big time.

Simon: Yes. And also you walk by this place every day and you don’t know what it is because it’s a block or two from the Bridgestone Arena. It’s right there.

Leahy: You don’t notice it. It’s right across the street from Hume Fogg. But what a wonderful venue it was. You can go to our lead story, which has images of looking down from the audience onto the arena. Very impressive.

Simon: They should use it for all the debates.

Leahy: They should.

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.