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 all-star panelist Dr. Carol M. Swain in studio to recount her experience with a protester at the recent Be Truthful event at which she was a speaker in Bismark, North Dakota.
Leahy: We are delighted to welcome back to our microphones in studio, our very good friend, former professor at Vanderbilt University, former candidate for mayor, and now senior fellow of Constitutional Studies at the Texas Public Policy Institute Foundation, our very good friend Carol Swain.
And now many other great things. We see you all over the place on Fox News and in a lot of other venues. Good morning, Carol.
Swain: Good morning, Michael. And good morning to all of you who got up early to hear Michael.
Leahy: (Laughs) They get up early to hear you, Carol! It’s 6:30 a.m. So I want to catch up with you on all the things that you’ve been doing. I mentioned several, but I didn’t capture at all what has been going on with Carol Swain in the past month or so.
Swain: I just returned from North Dakota and it was my first time speaking in Bismarck.
Leahy: Oh, hold on now. Hold on now. We talked about this. So North Dakota, it’s a little different in North Dakota than it is in Tennessee. You went to Bismarck, North Dakota?
Swain: I did, and I spoke at a theater. And what was interesting was I gave two talks, basically two acts. Act One was me telling my story. (Leahy chuckles)
And then we played a movie trailer in between. And then I presented my Critical Race Theory discussion. And it worked very well.
Leahy: Now let me just ask for those of you who’ve never been to Bismarck, North Dakota, it’s a long way from Nashville. And to get there, Bismarck is sort of in the west-central southern part of North Dakota. North Dakota has a population of about 700,000. Big state.
Swain: It’s the size of a congressional district.
Leahy: Yes. Big state geographically, but the population center actually is right on the Red River on the border with Minnesota. Fargo, that’s where the North Dakota State is.
That’s where the Great Plains software got started. But it’s not the capitol of the state. Fargo is actually a nice little town. But Bismarck is a little town and it’s kind of in the middle of nowhere.
Swain: I had a great time. I had dinner with the lieutenant governor and some of the individuals running for the school board. And I loved being there and the spirit of the people and they are determined to protect their state and their children from Critical Race Theory and some of these dangerous trends we see taking place across the country.
Leahy: So my connection to North Dakota is I’ve been up there on business about 15, 20 years ago. In the winter, it’s cold. It’s very cold. You went up there. It wasn’t that cold, was it?
Swain: Well…
Leahy: It was cold enough?
Swain: The forecast said it was going to be 50 degrees. But when I got there, probably it was 30 or 40 deg with the wind blowing. And so my light coat was not as warm as I needed. I could have been warmer if I had taken my heavy coat.
And then the day I was leaving, there was some snow and some sleet. But I had a wonderful experience. There was a protester at the end of the CRT event.
Leahy: A single protester?
Swain: She had two friends, but they were better behaved, and it turned out she had a Ph.D.
Leahy: But of course. (Laughter)
Swain: And after they finally got the microphone back from her she was escorted out of the room.
Leahy: This is cracking me up. So you go to Bismarck, North Dakota. And by the way, it’s kind of hard to get there. What route do you take via air to get there? Do you fly to Nashville to Minneapolis and then Minneapolis to Bismarck.
Swain: Yes, something like that. Something like that.
Leahy: It’s a long trip, isn’t it?
Swain: It is, but I’ve been to other places that were longer. I go to places where I fly into an airport, someone shows up with a pickup truck and drives me three hours to some little town, and there’s a lot of people waiting to hear me speak.
Leahy: And so how big was your audience here at this event?
Swain: Probably 100 or so.
Leahy: So you speak at this event, and then there’s a Q and A. Who is this protester? You learned she has a Ph.D. later, right?
Swain: Yes. She stands up and she says, how does it feel to be a white folks slave?
Leahy: This is the question of a Ph.D. person?
Swain: Yes. And she says you have sold your soul to get money and you’re here in North Dakota scaring all of these white people and trying to make them believe that they don’t have privilege. How does it feel to be a white folk slave?
And then she went on and on. I said, well if you let me speak, I’ll answer your question. I don’t want to hear the answer to your question to my question because I know what you’re going to say! (Leahy laughs)
And then some of the other people were trying to quiet her down. And I said, no, let us speak. I said, what do you want? Then she started talking about the stolen lands that were stolen from the Native Americans.
And I said, what is your solution? She was not interested in a dialogue. And eventually, they got the microphone from her. A few other people asked questions.
And then another woman stood up and said, that lady was a doctor so and so and so and so and she’s with public education and she has a doctorate. And I said that doesn’t impress me. It’s like, who cares? Some of the stupidest people I know have doctorates.
Leahy: Absolutely.
Swain: A doctorate means nothing. It’s not even worth the paper it’s printed on.
Leahy: The only thing you can do with a doctorate is you can get into the teacher’s union in higher education, basically, right?
Swain: And you can do research and teaching at a major university, but at the end of the day, when you leave academia, your degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Leahy: Was this person employed by the State Department of Higher Education?
Swain: Not higher education. She was a new hire for the public schools. And I think she really hurt herself because she spewed hate speech toward me and the other two ladies were more polite.
And then they posted a video clip of the microphone being taken away from the woman by two white women they put that in there by two white women and said we were fascist and we wouldn’t allow this lady to speak. And the name of the organization that invited me was Be Truthful. (Laughter)Â
Leahy: This is crazy.
Swain: It was.
Listen to the full 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.
