Live from Music Row Wednesday 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 The Tennessee Star’s national political editor Neil McCabe to the newsmaker line to recap the premiere of the movie Rigged: The Zuckerberg-Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump Tuesday evening at Mar-a-Lago.
Leahy: We are joined now by the best Washington correspondent in the country, national political editor for The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network, Neil W. McCabe. Neil, you live in Palm Beach, Florida. Last night you were at Mar-a-Lago with former President Trump. Tell us about that.
McCabe: The president was amazing last night. Of course, he was there with just a slew of mega-luminaries to watch the premiere of the film Rigged, which describes how Mark Zuckerberg used $400 million to rig the 2020 election. And it was a fabulous night.
Leahy: It sounds like you might have been there a little bit past the normal sleeping hour, my friend. (McCabe chuckles) Were there libations around? (Laughs)
McCabe: I did not partake. I was working until the end because every time I went to leave, I would notice somebody that I wanted to interview. And it was just very tightly controlled.
They just didn’t want reporters roaming all over the place bothering the guests, the paying customers. But I was able to talk to a number of the people. And it was a great night. And Trump was very gracious.
He spoke twice, once at the dinner and then once for the movie. And he actually stayed to watch the movie, which surprised me because sometimes these kinds of things, the big star, once the lights go down, will sort of slip away. But he actually stayed and watched it and then met with people afterwards. It was great.
Leahy: How many people were there and how many members of the press were there?
McCabe: There were about 10 members of the press. There were two reporters from Politico and then Anthony, my videographer, and I. So we were the only Washington people.
There was a local guy from Miami Newsmax and then some sort of other local people. But I was surprised that there wasn’t more press. But I think the problem is that it’s just very difficult when the security of Mara-a-Lago is very tight.
And maybe that’s because in the past people have wandered on, and so now they’re just very careful. But you have people like Kellyanne Conway, Reince Priebus, and Cory Lewandowski. It was just those kinds of MAGA people.
Of course, David Bossie was there holding court, and the movie really went into detail about how Zuckerberg targeted Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia. And the big takeaway from the movie is that this is not some UFO theory or some conspiracy idea or delusion.
These are facts. These happened. It’s documented in federal filings. And there are people like David Plouffe, who was Barack Obama’s campaign manager, who worked with Zuckerberg.
And before the 2020 election, Plouffe wrote a book about how to defeat Trump. And he was hired by Zuckerberg to spend $400 million to defeat Donald Trump. And that’s what they did.
Leahy: Yes. It was legal but not legitimate, because basically the takeover local election administration,= turning it into a Democrat get-out-the-vote effort is well documented in the documentary rigged2020.com. Crom has a question for you, Neil.
McCabe: Hey, Crom.
Carmichael: Neil, my question is, do you think that, does the movie portray any stuffing of the ballot boxes – after they shut down the counting in six states?
Is there any evidence that the Democrats just ran out with tens of thousands of ballots and just stuffed them in the Zuckerberg boxes and then had somebody else pick them up and take them down for the vote counters to count?
McCabe: No. What I admire about this film, and what people might have a problem with in this film, is it doesn’t deal anything with the truck with 200,000 ballots driving from New York to Pennsylvania.
There’s none of these stories. It talks about ballot harvesting, which was illegal. It talks about the drop boxes, which were sort of sanctioned but not really properly, I guess, codified.
Leahy: Not properly approved by the state legislatures but slipped in under these emergency rules.
McCabe: Exactly. It talks about that effort and how the drop boxes and other get-out-the-vote efforts were focused on Democratic areas and how that was done using government agencies that were basically rented by Zuckerberg.
Leahy: Exactly. What I learned about it is in Wisconsin, they had this political operative fly in there from Brooklyn, a hardcore Democrat who was controlling everything going on in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the counting of these tickets. They highlighted that and that was quite compelling.
McCabe: Yes. I guess the first clue that something was going on is that there were five key cities in Wisconsin where there’s a concentration of Democratic votes and the first grants went to those five cities.
Leahy: And they were all pre-sold, too, weren’t they? Now let me ask you this, Neil. What was the overall feeling there among these MAGA luminaries and the former president?
McCabe: The first thing that really struck me was that people who were fighting like cats and dogs, at each other’s throats during the campaign and during their time together in the Trump White House, were getting along famously and everyone was having a good time.
Everyone was on the same team, and everyone had a sort of confidence that, yeah, we lost the election. We are no longer in the White House, but we know what they did to us and we’re not going to let them do it to us again.
Leahy: That was quite interesting. Tell the listening audience, most of whom have never been inside Mar-a-Lago, the process of getting inside and then, what’s it like inside.
McCabe: Getting into Mar-a-Lago, the traffic, it’s not as large a compound as people think, because it actually was a private home for a movie star. And so the roads are very small and kind of complicated.
There’s the Mar-a-Lago security. And then of course there’s Secret Service because the president is there and so Secret Service basically said you couldn’t have any cameras.
We had a live view, which is a live-streaming broadcast-quality signal generator so that we could do a live hit for a network. And we weren’t allowed to bring that in.
Basically, you were allowed to bring in iPhones and it was very troubling, very frustrating. I know that the Newsmax guys threw a fit over it. (Leahy chuckles) It’s like we were forewarned, so I had already processed this.
And if I can win a fight I’ll fight, but if I know I’m going to lose the fight I just say “thank you, sir. I’m very happy to be here.” I realized that there was no win possible so we just sort of went ahead.
Leahy: But you were able to get a report live using the live view from outside. That was great on Bannon’s WarRoom. Then inside, using the cellphone, you had a great interview with Corey Lewandowski. What is it like inside Mar-a-Lago?
McCabe: It is opulent to the point of garishness. The decorations and the gold. The place runs like a clock and it’s just fantastic.
The staff there is amazing. The facilities are just amazing. The lawns, the lights, everything there is perfect. It’s really everything you wanted it to be. I was really impressed
Listen to the full interview here:
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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.
