Live from Music Row, Monday 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 Fox Nation host and Middle Tennessee resident, Tomi Lahren to the newsmaker line to weigh in on police officers, American education, and Nashville Mayor John Cooper.
Leahy: On our newsmaker line, our good friend from Fox Nation, Tomi Lahren. Good morning, Tomi. Thanks for joining us.
Lahren: Good morning. Another busy week in the news, I’m sure it’s going to be. Never a dull moment lately, right, guys?
Leahy: Exactly. Tomi, you had a tweet, which I thought was quite interesting that you put out Saturday. I’ll read it for our listeners and then get your reaction to it. You said, the officers that committed the crime in Memphis will be held accountable.
So to attack innocent officers over what happened in Memphis is ridiculous. To attack officers in a completely different city in a completely different state is just an excuse to act like a fool. Well said. Would you like to elaborate on that for our listeners?
Lahren: Sure. I think by now we all have this fatigue when something like this happens in our nation. And of course, when tragedy strikes any family, any community, we all feel for those family members, and we all feel for what happened, especially in this case here in Memphis, being that it’s so close to us in Nashville and then in our state of Tennessee.
First I have to say that as somebody who does support the millions of professional and decent peace officers we have around this country, it also breaks my heart to see people, especially in different cities, in different states, New York and LA. being two right off the top of my head that I saw over the weekend where people were going wild, smashing things, looting, vandalizing police stations, attacking officers, and jumping on police cruisers.
There’s just no room for that. Our officers have had a hard enough time in the last several years, and it really just breaks my heart to see so many good officers again have to be degraded and demoralized because of the actions of a very, very small minority who did something bad.
Leahy: Exactly right on that, Tommy. I want to kind of shift gears a little bit because on Thursday you were on a program with Pete Hegseth, your colleague at Fox News. It was held here. It was a Fox Nation program about the miseducation of America. I believe you were a guest at that event that was held at The Factory at Franklin.
Lahren: Yes, absolutely. We had a great time. I was able to speak with Pete and then some other notable people in the education space. Dr. Carol Swain was also there. I’m a big fan of hers anyway.
But we just talked about what we believe is the miseducation of America. And by that what we mean is that our young people are right now being educated in liberal indoctrination and not reading, writing, and doing arithmetic.
And when you’ve got Chinese students learning quantum physics and our students are learning about drag queens, it’s not going to end well. And that was largely what our summit focused on, is how to get American students back on track and what parents and community members can do to help make sure that happens.
Leahy: What do you think is the number one thing that must happen in that space?
Lahren: I think the big part of the problem is that these teachers’ unions control education. They have a stranglehold on politicians. 94 percent of their contributions go to Democrats. They spend on politically motivated things more than they spend on their own members. That’s a huge part of the problem.
And then I would say another part of it is because we know schools are like this. We know a lot of teachers tend to have more of a liberal bent because they go to liberal universities and the cycle continues. But what we really talked about is what parents can do, because there’s not a lot we can really do to fix the schools.
And we’re going to try. School board activism is great. Making sure that you become involved is great. But something that parents can do every day at home and every night in their home is to make sure that they’re engaging with their students and make sure they’re engaging with their young people.
I heard it a lot at this summit. It’s really hard to tell your kids to be off their phones and off TikTok when their parents are on their phones and on TikTok. So that’s a big part of this. Be alert, be aware, and know what’s going on, and that can solve a lot of problems.
Leahy: You chose to move to Nashville. What now? Is it two years ago? How long ago did you move to Nashville?
Lahren: Almost three years now and having fun.
Leahy: We are so glad that you moved and joined and moved to the best state in the union and state income tax-free. By the way, you are a contributor at Fox News and on Fox Nation. I noticed with great interest on Thursday at The Factory at Franklin, the Fox Nation program was on.
But then in the evening, Laura Ingraham broadcasted her Fox News program from The Factory at Franklin. I’m just wondering, Tomi, are you influencing Fox News to cover Nashville more? (Boucek chuckles)
Lahren: (Chuckles) Hey, listen, I think that our good friends at Fox and my colleagues are really realizing how much love we have here in Tennessee. So any time that I can bring more of our Fox colleagues, we already got Pete Hegseth here.
A lot of people that I work with really love this city and they love this state. So we’ll have to see what happens. But there’s a lot of love for Fox here, and there’s a lot of love to go around.
We’re hoping that we can get some more of those good conservatives here because you get a different treatment. They don’t burn down our Christmas tree here in Nashville, so it’s a different environment for us.
Leahy: Our all star-panelist director of litigation for the Southeastern Legal Foundation is in studio. Braden has a question for you, Tomi.
Boucek: Tomi, welcome to Nashville. First off, I wanted to ask you a question. You mentioned some of the indoctrination issues going on in schools. How much do you think the poor performance of educational outcomes relates to the decision of schools to stop addressing what you called the basics; reading, writing, math, and start addressing indoctrination issues or drag queens? Because I think by any objective performance, the outcomes we’re getting from public schools, have just been terrible.
Lahren: Right. And then you add to that the fact that we had the COVID era of shutting down schools and masking kids. We talked about this the other night, too. Even in the most conservative states, we know that Nashville is not necessarily a conservative city, but Tennessee is certainly a conservative state, you still have schools that are problematic and that are still teaching these things.
It’s critical race theory. It’s baked into the curriculum. A lot of teachers don’t want to be teaching it, but they’re almost having to recite things as it’s handed down to them. And a lot of these curriculums are coming from places like California. So it’s a big problem.
And unfortunately, sometimes we have these activist teachers, certainly activist teachers’ unions that bake this kind of material into the curriculum, and parents are unaware. Until the time of COVID which was the silver lining, a lot of parents did see what their children were bringing home.
They saw what they were learning on remote learning, and it perks in people’s ears up, which was a great thing. But we’ve got generational learning loss as well, and somebody has to reckon with that, and I don’t think it’s happened yet. I’m hoping that that’s coming, but unfortunately, there’s going to be many, many years of damage that we’re going to have to repair as a country.
Leahy: As a resident in Middle Tennessee in particular, we have a mayor’s race coming up in Nashville. Mayor Cooper is running for reelection. There are a couple of challengers. That election will be held in August. Do you have any thoughts on the mayor’s race here in Nashville?
Lahren: When I moved to Nashville, that was at the height of COVID and I was no fan of Mayor John Cooper. I will tell you that. I think I was tweeting on a daily basis, calling the office, certainly on a weekly basis, to ask when we were going to reopen.
I couldn’t believe that coming from Los Angeles, California, to Nashville, Tennessee, we had some of the same restrictions and then dealt with a lot of the things that he put in place.
I was really fired up and very angry at this mayor. And then after that, he was able to skirt a lot of criticism because people didn’t seem to be paying so much attention. I will tell you this. I give him credit for some of the things that he’s done.
But when you’re driving down these roads here in Nashville, one of those small things the mayor could do is maybe make sure that our roads don’t feel like we’re driving down a country road in the middle of nowhere when we’re on 8th South. I would like to see somebody come in and do a better job in that position.
I’d like to see a good conservative. I don’t know how likely that is, but I will just say I will never forgive Mayor Cooper for what he did during COVID with the lockdowns here in Nashville.
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 “Tomi Lahren” by Tomi Lahren. Background Photo “Classroom” by Wokandapix.
