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 Clint Brewer to comment on the recent conviction by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to keep both Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off their previous committees.
Leahy: In studio, all-star panelist Clint Brewer Clint, of course, tonight at 6:00, Pete Hagseth is doing a Fox Nation broadcast from The Factory at Franklin. Tomi Lahren will be a guest there. I think Carol Swain may be a guest as well.
Then at 9:00 tonight, also from The factory at Franklin, at the Fox News program, the Laura Ingraham Angle will be broadcast live. Will you be there? Will you be one of the guests?
Brewer: I will not.
Leahy: You will not?
Brewer: I will be at home.
Leahy: I will be asleep at 9:00.
Brewer: It’s past my bedtime.
Leahy: It’s past my bedtime as well. But hey, look, if you’re a listener and you’ve always been interested in Fox News and how they produce things and what that’s like, it would be a fun thing to do. And so I would recommend going there. Say hello to Pete Hegseth.
Say hello to Laura Ingraham. And I think tickets are still available. Just go on Facebook and put Pete Hegseth at The Factory in Franklin. Laura Ingraham at The Factory in Franklin.
Go and look at it, and then call us back tomorrow and tell us what that experience was like. Clint, I got something really interesting for you. You know how these things twist and turn.
Brewer: Which things are we talking about?
Leahy: Political stuff.
Brewer: Got you.
Leahy: Political stuff. It twists and turns. And so the big story we thought was, or at least I thought I have revised and extended my comments on this subsequently, the whole bizarre 15-ballot process for electing the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy.
And he had kind of a reputation of being almost the right word, a little bit more moderate than the conservatives. And the issue was in doubt. There were 21 who were republicans are posted, one of whom, Andy Ogles, newly elected from the 5th district, he after the 11th ballot, voted for him anyway.
And Matt Gaetz the guy out of Florida, and five others voted present at the end, and as a result, he became speaker. And so we thought, oh, my goodness, the reaction wasn’t positive around the country in the sense that, oh, these Republicans can’t get their act together.
And then CBS News and Joe Biden the following Monday gave a huge gift to the Republicans. Oh, classified documents were discovered, and it’s been classified documents ever since.
Brewer: Right.
Leahy: And so what’s interesting is Kevin McCarthy, who was kind of, oh, I don’t know, perceived as sort of a milk toasty moderate.
Brewer: A little soft.
Leahy: Been perceived as wishy. And even the way he speaks, he’s kind of mild, moderate, measured.
Brewer: Not this week.
Leahy: No. Okay, so you got to give props to Speaker Kevin McCarthy because he said the first two committee assignments, the Intelligence Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee, we’ll talk about intelligence first, then we’ll get to foreign affairs. So he said that the intelligence committee in the House is very important.
You get to share intelligence information. You know, the kind of stuff that’s top secret, that’s classified, that you can only learn in a SCIF, a secure compartmentalized information facility where you can’t bring your phone in.
Brewer: And also, there are some unwritten rules that went on those committees; you don’t talk about it all.
Leahy: You don’t talk about it. You don’t lie about it. So the former chairman of that committee, Adam Schiff, biggest liar in Congress, that guy. A Democrat. And then this Eric Swalwell guy who had a Chinese spy girlfriend called Fang Fang. Fang Fang.
And of course, you know what the joke is. Let’s say it was a honey pot. He’s not denied that he had a very intimate personal relationship with her.
Brewer: I don’t understand how he was still on the Intelligence Committee.
Leahy: How he was ever put on the intelligence, because okay, I’ll use a joke. Are you ready? If you’ve got little children, cover their ears for, like, 10 seconds.
Brewer: It’s a family show, Mike.
Leahy: It’s a family show. But the allegation that he denied is he did the bang bang with Fang Fang, right? Yeah, I went there. Right?
Brewer: Oh, dear. Here’s the thing. Speaker McCarthy, first of all, Schiff was overtly political with his position.
Leahy: And a liar.
Brewer: I think the tradition in the House, which is less traditional than the Senate, you always sort of kept the ranking members, right? You didn’t reappoint the people the Democrats had put on there.
But Schiff, if you’re going to be that loud and proud when you’re in power, then you can’t expect there not to be an overcorrection or a correction. When you’re out of power.
Brewer: When you’re out of power. That one really was the mock surprise.
Leahy: I’m shocked!
Brewer: Yeah. I mean, come on. And so anybody with half a brain who understands something about D.C. knew that was coming. The Swalwell thing, it was reported at the time when Axios broke the big story about I believe her name is Christina Fang, here in this country.
Leahy: Fang, Fang.
Brewer: Yes, broke that, and it was a big story when they broke it. And then other media outlets followed on, and then conservative media jumped on it and started asking him questions. That would be Representative Swalwell that he really wouldn’t answer about his relationship with her. And then she’s apparently disappeared.
Leahy: Disappeared. No one knows where she is. For readers, or for listeners, rather, for context, this was a woman who was in the US and getting involved in California politics and finding her way into the political lives of people who looked like they were rising stars out of California. And so the allegation is that she’s a Chinese spy. Axios is not some fringe media outlet.
Leahy: It is center-left.
Brewer: It’s the center-left. It’s closer to the center than most, and it’s fairly well respected. And certainly, everybody in D.C. wants to get their news in it. So it’s not like this came from some blog or Reddit page.
This was a reputable news source to the extent there are any in D.C. How he was still on the Intelligence Committee under Pelosi is remarkable.
Leahy: And what McCarthy said…
Brewer: It’s crazy.
Leahy: And he’s got the authority to do this on the Intelligence Committee. He said, I’m not appointing you to the Intelligence Committee. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell. And then Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, said, oh, yeah, I’m going to nominate him. And McCarthy said, too bad, so sad, you guys, because you’re liars and are compromised are gone from this very important committee.
Brewer: And his remarks to the press.
Leahy: When we come back, we’ll talk about those remarks. And it was a brutal one-two punch from the previously milk-toasty Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy. And it was a knockdown. He just tore them apart. It was very impressive.
Brewer: It was.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this 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 “Kevin McCarthy” by Kevin McCarthy.Â
