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 discuss his recent article addressing the three candidates taken off the GOP primary ballot for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District.
Leahy: We are now joined in-studio for the full hour by our very good friend, all-star panelist, my former boss at PJTV, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist, great mystery writer, and senior editor at The Epoch Times, Roger Simon. Good morning, Roger.
Simon: Buenos dias!
Leahy: Buenos dias. And you had a terrific column up late last night. The headline at The Epoch Times: “What Happens in Tennessee Does Not Stay in Tennessee.” I love that headline.
Simon: We’ve all been to Vegas.
Leahy: I’m going to read the first two sentences, which are both questions, and then get your reaction, and then tell us about the rest of this column.
The first question: What do Senator Rand Paul, Newsmax’s Sebastian Gorka, BLEXIT’s Candace Owens, and country star John Rich have in common?
For that matter, what do former first daughter Ivanka Trump, former ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the fifth-richest person in the world, Larry Ellison, have in common?
Simon: The answer is they shot from the hip … (Laughter) … by backing either Robby Starbuck or Morgan Ortagus for the 5th Congressional District.
Leahy: For the GOP nominee. When you say “shot from the hip …”
Simon: What may de facto have been the office, although it won’t be quite as much as a donnybrook, I don’t think, for the Republicans as predicted, it will certainly be a Republican winner.
So the primary was the election, effectively. And these two people, for different reasons, although one primary reason of the carpetbagging, but for other different reasons, they should have no business running.
Leahy: And they were removed from the ballot. Or to be specific, they were removed from the ballot by the Tennessee Republican Party a couple of weeks ago.
A hearing of an adjudication committee of that state executive committee was held on Tuesday. A majority vote, 13 to 3, voted to keep them off the ballot, keep both Morgan Ortagus and Robby Starbuck off the ballot, because they failed to meet the standards set out in the Republican Party bylaws which, by the way, were adopted in April of 2019.
That was three months before Robby Starbuck registered to vote in Tennessee and two years and six months before Morgan Ortagus registered to vote in Tennessee.
Simon: True. And also, when you write a piece for something like The Epoch Times, which I do four times a week, you know that they are going to be people writing an opposition to you in the comments.
And I think in this case, I haven’t seen them yet. This piece just went up maybe 20 minutes ago, so there will be a lot of people because there are a lot of people, particularly with Starbuck, who became kind of devotees of the man because he has charisma and will be saying that this is unfair because the people should decide!
But A, there are rules, and, B, the people didn’t know what the man was really about. That’s a second phenomenon. And also, I believe I know a couple of members of that committee that voted the SEC and I certainly didn’t talk to them about what their votes should be. That’s not my place. But I know them to be highly moral and constitutional people.
Leahy: These are grassroots people, everyday people who are earnest and sincere, do this job. They don’t get paid for it. They do it because they love Tennessee and they love our country.
Simon: And I think probably they felt they were in an unfortunate situation. They didn’t want to be judge and jury on these people.
Leahy: Yes. But the problem is these bylaws came about because in Tennessee we have open primaries and sometimes candidates come up who really aren’t Republicans and the bylaws were set back in April 2019 to say you have to have voted in three out of four of the most recent statewide primaries to get on the ballot.
Neither of these candidates had. And the decision on whether or not they were vouched for as Republicans, anybody could argue they were vouched for in the appeals but the decision-maker in this was the 17-member committee. And 13 to 3 they said no way.
Simon: And one of the candidates, Starbuck, lied to you directly in this room. This is the old phrase of 18th-century British law, Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
Leahy: [A Latin phrase meaning] False in one thing, false in everything.
Simon: And you know, we live our lives and we realize that.
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 “Robby Starbuck” by Robby Starbuck.
Laurie, yes he did. He claimed he voted in TN and when his voting record was looked at he hadn’t voted any time in TN. He did admit on another radio program that he didn’t understand the question. he said he moved here in TN 2018 but has not voted in any elections.
What did Starbuck (really Robert S. Newsom) lie about in studio?