Live from Music Row Tuesday 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 official guest host Aaron Gulbransen in the studio to comment upon the current polling of the US House and Senate races.
Leahy: In the studio, the official guest host of The Tennessee Star Report, Aaron Gulbransen. Good morning, Aaron.
Gulbransen: Good morning, sir. How are you?
Leahy: Also our former lead political reporter – stolen! – stolen from us by the Faith and Freedom Coalition. You laugh every time I say that but you know, you’re just really good and they just made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.
Gulbransen: This is true. There was no gun taped in the commode, but yes, this is very, very true.
Leahy: Well, you know, we got a week left, Aaron. I am so tired of this election already. (Gulbransen laughs) I can’t wait for our election night special from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Give us your take on where all this goes. Who takes the House, and who takes the Senate? What’s the latest?
Gulbransen: The House was always going to go Republican, the Senate’s breaking Republican. If I were the Democrats and I were a Democrat strategist, heaven forbid, I would never have let Fetterman debate with Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania.
Leahy: Why? Tell me why.
Gulbransen: Because I frankly think that Fetterman would be leading and would probably have pulled it off by one or two points if he didn’t debate.
Leahy: He should have done that whole basement strategy. Craig, did you watch Fetterman, who is a far-left progressive, and never really had a job in his life? He looks like – and no offense to the WWE guys that you love, Aaron – a washed-up WWE fighter, right?
Huey: That’s a good description, Michael. You know, you watch that debate and you cringe. It’s just like either you feel sorry for him, or what was he thinking getting up there? What were his consultants thinking? What was his wife thinking letting him get up there? Because it was embarrassing.
Leahy: Yes, it was really bad. And yet some polls show him still leading. Aaron, did you see the poll that shows him up by four or five?
Gulbransen: Yeah, I did. You’re going to see a bounce-around with a few of those where Oz is leading, and he’s leading. But I think ultimately that debate performance cost him. I mean, they could always make up the vote total in Philadelphia at 3:00 a.m. in the morning.
Leahy: (Whispers) Hey, guys. We just need a couple of hundred thousand votes. Can you gin them up for us?
Gulbransen: And of course, I’m assuming you saw the poll that came out last week in Arizona that had Kari Lake up 11 points.
Leahy: There’s another one out today. Kari Lake, of course, perhaps the best pure communicator on the GOP side right now. Highly effective. Of course, she spent 20 years as an anchor in Phoenix.
She knows how to get her message across. I did see there is a polling firm called OH Predictive Insights. It’s based in Arizona. Their poll, released today, only has her up by two points.
But it’s awfully hard to imagine, if you put these two candidates side by side, Kari Lake, who is a highly effective communicator, versus Katie Hobbs, who is not a highly effective communicator. And that’s being kind.
Huey: And I think one of the great things about this is somebody like Kari Lake, and really, Blake [Masters], who’s running for the U.S. Senate, these candidates are outsiders. These candidates are not the normal type of Republican that is afraid to speak up and speak out.
These are the ones who stand on principle and aren’t willing to be run over by the media. It’s so refreshing. It’s hard to believe what could be happening in November.
Leahy: Speaking of not being afraid to be run over by the media or the typical attacks, Aaron Gulbransen, did you see this? Liz Cheney, the purported Republican who, one of 10 members of the House who voted to impeach Donald Trump, whose father was Vice President Dick Cheney.
He was vice president from 2001 to 2009 under George W. Bush. He’s from Wyoming. She’s from the suburbs of Washington, D.C. But she’s represented Wyoming in the House of Representatives for some time.
An outspoken critic of Donald Trump. I don’t know if you could call her the sort of the Quisling representative of Republicans on the Kafkaesque J6 Committee – Quisling, of course, being the famous Nazi collaborator in World War II in Norway.
Hence the term “quisling.” But she now got crushed in July in the GOP primary for the House in Wyoming by a Trump-endorsed candidate. She has a political action committee.
She put a $500,000 [ad] buy telling people, I’ve never voted Democrat, but if I lived in Arizona, I would vote against Kari Lake. Aaron, have you seen how that’s backfired?
Gulbransen: I have. And of course, she’s engaging in this bizarre proxy war now with, or not really not proxy war, just outright war with Tulsi Gabbard, who, of course, famously just left the Democrat Party. You’ve got Liz Cheney, who’s ostensibly been kicked out of the Republican Party, backing Democrats.
And you’ve had Tulsi Gabbard, who willingly and voluntarily left the Democrat Party, backing Republicans which is an interesting thing. And of course, Liz Cheney is backing, I believe, Elissa Slotkin in Michigan.
Leahy: A Democrat. She’s going all full-in, left-wing Democrat.
Gulbransen: Slotkin is not a moderate.
Leahy: No. She’s a progressive.
Gulbransen: Yes. But I did want to make the point that if the governor’s race, Kari Lake wins by five or more, I expect Blake Masters to pull that off.
Leahy: As we’ve used the phrase “dragging someone across the finish line,” and he’s not a terrible candidate. He’s not a great candidate. I don’t think. He’s a little stiff. Not a bad guy.
But he has been gaining traction in Arizona. Craig, you came away from Southern California. A lot of Southern Californians, if you don’t move from Southern California to Tennessee …
Huey: You go to Arizona. That’s right. Absolutely.
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.
Background Photo “U.S. Capitol” by Thuan Vo.
Let’s fully disclose here. Dick Cheney was based in Wyoming for electoral purposes. He spent his entire adult life in DC. He was getting deferments to dodge the draft multiple times from DC.
And, the reason Liz is supporting the Michigan Ex-CIA, Jewish Demcorat incumbent is, because like her dad Dick, Liz is in favor of perpetual war that costs Americans lives but benefits a certain country in the Middle East. Let’s not beat around the bush (no pun intended).