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 Tennessee Congressman Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN-03) to the newsmaker line to comment upon the recent deaths of 51 migrants in an abandoned trailer near the southern border and what he plans to do about securing it.
Leahy: On our newsmaker line, Congressman Chuck Fleischmann from the third district of Tennessee. Good morning, Congressman Fleischmann.
Fleischmann: Michael, good morning. So I appreciate you and the show, and it’s great to join our great friends in our great town, capital city of Nashville. Thank you.
Leahy: We wanted to talk with you about this terrible news. Apparently now 51 illegal migrants were found dead in the back of a truck. Overheated and died of too much heat in a truck where they were abandoned. You’ve been following this, apparently, now, 51 dead.
My view is this is another example of the failed border policies of the Biden administration and Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. What new information can you provide us with?
Fleischmann: Michael, the information and the story is always the same. If we were talking about a tax issue, if we were talking about some other issue, I’d have to say, well, I just had a vote.
This is a process that I have been involved in for years. I’m the ranking member. Let me not use the D.C. dialect. That means the highest-ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee.
I have fought for border wall funding. I have funded Donald Trump’s wall. Biden won’t build it. I have fought these cartels. Biden won’t pay attention, Mayorkas won’t pay attention, and you’re absolutely right. These 51-plus deaths are clearly, directly related to the failed, multiple failures – I’m glad you had plural at the end of your talk there – multiple failures of the Biden administration open, porous border, criminal activity going on with the cartels.
If this had happened … I don’t want anyone to die anywhere, period. But if this had happened because of border security or Border Patrol, we’d have the radical Left out there in the street, in the mainstream media, screaming.
This one happened, because, again, this is criminal activity. Biden looks the other way. And just last week, I headed up the Homeland bill on approach. NOT SURE WHAT’S BEING SAID, OR IF IT CONNECTS DIRECTLY TO NEXT BIT OF TEXT. ALSO A QUESTION BELOW:
Democrats, I want our listeners to know, that two-way persons continue to vote with this administration on these failed policies. It’s outrageous.
Leahy: Roger Simon has a question for you, Congressman.
Simon: Something has been troubling me for a long time. What is the reason that they’re doing this? Let me amplify the question a little bit. The old traditional thing is they want voters.
That’s a horrible idea, but that’s been the common thought why they had an open border. But it would seem to me now with so many Latinos turning to the conservative side, that even that seems strange. Is it just to destroy the country as we know it, or what’s really in their heads?
Fleischmann: Roger, it’s an excellent question. The best answer I can give you, looking at the totality of all the circumstances – and being an appropriater, we touch everything in Congress, so I can give you a pretty good answer. The radical Left, which has taken control of the Democratic Party, has a very rigid ideology.
They have a set of devastatingly horrible, anti-American, anti-capitalist principles that they continue to espouse and cling to even when they fail, and when their policies fail. I’ve always said bad ideology gives us bad policy, and gives us horrible results.
The only way we are going to cure this, Roger, is at the ballot box. Now, in our great state of Tennessee, we have two outstanding United States senators in Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty. We don’t have to worry about that.
We have a great House delegation led by myself as the dean in the House. I will make sure we work hard to keep conservative and stay on track.
But we’ve got to win in November, and we’ve got to start standing up for the ideals that made this country great. We’re starting to get wins. We got one from the Supreme Court last week.
We’ve got to hold the line and protect the Second Amendment. But the bottom-line answer to your question is, they all come together, they stick together. They’re a better-disciplined lot than we are.
Simon: They sure are.
Fleischmann: But because they’re punitive, they’re punitive. You know how we’re … [simulates typical Republican congressmen conversation] “How do you feel today, Congressman? Do you think you can join us?” Well, and if they don’t, there are no repercussions.
But the Democrats, they’ll go to them and say, hey, do you like that 30-year committee that you’ve been sharing? Change your vote. And guess what they do?
Simon: So the short form is they want a communist leadership.
Fleischmann: The short form is they want their radical left-wing agenda, which, sadly, I think in many ways is globalist, is certainly not pro-American, certainly does not favor the great free enterprise system.
Anything that’s been great in this country, they’ve tried to tear down for years. And they’ve had, unfortunately, great success. However, the American people are changing.
You alluded to the fact that Latino voters are looking and coming into the Republican Party in droves. Why? Because we’ve got great values: God, country, respect for our traditions.
And guess what? These people who left socialist countries, want nothing to do with socialism. So, let’s be optimistic, Roger. Let’s keep our hope. But we have got to keep the pressure on.
We’ve got to win local elections. We’ve got to win state elections. We’ve got to win federal elections. God willing, we get the White House back in 2024.
Leahy: Congressman Fleischmann, as the ranking member on the Home Security Committee, Appropriations Committee, what specific actions will you take to address the problems that created this situation where 51 illegal migrants were found dead in the back of a truck abandoned near San Antonio, Texas, earlier this week?
Fleischmann: My colleagues and I on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, along with our great colleagues in the Senate – and again, Bill Hagerty is our great appropriater in the state of Tennessee, he’s got four A-plus committees, and he deserves them all. But we will work together to continue to push for funding.
And here is the other thing I want to stress. Biden’s disinformation board that they put up, we want to use the power of the purse. I put up just last week an amendment to block all funding from this radical, left-wing, old Soviet-style disinformation board.
I don’t want Joe Biden and his left-wing minions to determine what the truth is in America. I’ll leave that to the good American people. I trust the people over the government.
Biden does not, because he believes in big bloated government and their bureaucrats. So my answer to you and my commitment to you and to the people of our state and to our country, is to make absolutely certain that we keep the pressure on, funding the things we need to do, and cutting the funding and keeping it away from them so we can thwart their horrible policies.
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.
