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 all-star panelist and Senior Editor-At-Large for The Epoch Times Roger Simon in-studio to weigh in on the lack of qualified Democratic presidential candidates and poked fun at a Trump run as Speaker of the House with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as president.
Leahy: And we’re here in studio with Rogers Simon. Roger, we’ve been looking at the 2022 midterm elections, and I think the consensus that you and I have developed is that the trend is it doesn’t look like there’s anything out there right now that we can see from the Biden administration or the Democrats other than a catastrophic foreign situation that will stop what is likely a significant Republican victory in November 2022.
Simon: But speaking of that, if I were Putin or Xi, I might want to cause one just to keep Biden in office.
Leahy: That’s exactly the point.
Simon: Because he’s such a boon to them.
Leahy: Easily manipulated.
Simon: No kidding.
Leahy: Yeah, no kidding. Let’s take a turn here and look at 2024. The reason we have to is that we have such an awful, miserable, lousy, terrible current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Let’s assume that all the election law reforms put forward by conservative Republican state legislatures remain in place and so that we’re able to limit the amount of cheating that took place. My words, not yours. Election irregularities that took place in 2020. Let’s say that the elections will be fair.
Simon: Okay.
Leahy: Now the big question. Let’s take each party and look at it. Joe Biden says he’s running for reelection.
Simon: He’s not.
Leahy: He’s not
Simon: If he makes it through his term, it’ll be fairly miraculous.
Leahy: Yeah. I think the probability he makes it through his term is significantly less than 50 percent. Yeah, I think so, too.
Simon: I play tennis with a lot of guys his age an d not a single one of them who is anywhere near as gaga as the President.
Leahy: So then we’ve got a vice President, Kamala Harris. Now, she’s not disabled by age, but she is disabled by capability.
Simon: And personality.
Leahy: And go down the list. She’s kind of odd.
Simon: She’s the definition of what the shrinks call inappropriate affect.
Leahy: Yes. Inappropriate affect.
Simon: Like laughing at things that aren’t really funny and so forth.
Leahy: Yeah, like some defense. She laughs at things at the wrong time. And apparently, her staff is deserting her because she’s not reading the briefing books. You’re a Vice President. That’s a serious gig. Read the briefing books! But she’s not doing that.
Simon: Also, she’s mean to people. She’s mean to her staffers, apparently.
Leahy: Lazy and mean.
Simon: This carries over from the reputation she had in California.
Leahy: I don’t see either of those gaining the Democratic nomination in 2024.
Simon: No, it’s very hard to see who will. I think it’s mysterious at this point. I think Pete Buttigieg that some people a trial balloon was already set up by the media. You can see them doing it, but he’s about as qualified as…
Leahy: He’s a non-entity.
Simon: He’s a non-entity. He was a mediocre, maybe even a failed Mayor of a small city. That was it.
Leahy: Well, he’s able to talk in McKinseyisms. The big consulting firm, Fortune 500. Not very practical.
Simon: Also, not experienced and looks like a kid anyway.
Leahy: He looks like a kid. But other than him, all politicians want to be President, right? They aspire to it, but they have to have some chops. Is there anybody on the Democratic side who doesn’t look like a complete idiot?
Simon: No. Maybe Bill De Blasio. (Leahy laughs) He’s got a lot of time now to build up his campaign.
Leahy: I don’t see Bernie Sanders running again, do you?
Simon: Oh, I think there’s someone we know who’s looking at it very hard right now.
Leahy: Someone we know.
Simon: Someone that we know. Personally, I don’t know her.
Leahy: I think I know who you’re talking about.
Simon: Hillary Rodham Clinton. I think there’s a good chance that she may get the nomination. Well, she looks at it. She’s already been critical of the current administration.
Leahy: She wrote a novel in which she criticized as a moron, a fictional President of the United States who looks a lot like Joe Biden.
Simon: Yes. No, she’s certainly thinking about it. She’s certainly about as ambitious a human being as you could find. So who else have they got?
Leahy: We’re adding little audio clips here. Of course, we’re going to be adding the famous Joe Biden. Come on, man! With Hillary Clinton, we’re going to add a clip. She’s back! (Laughter)
Simon: Did she ever go away?
Leahy: But she’s awful.
Simon: Yeah, but if you’re asking me to be a prognosticator…
Leahy: You think it’d be Hillary?
Simon: There’s no one else I can see.
Leahy: Okay, give me another name. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? (Laughs)
Simon: Not a chance. Sandy, as they call her on Newsmax. Or rather, Tucker calls her Sandy.
Leahy: Tucker calls her Sandy.
Simon: I think she’s going to have a problem being reelected. Well, they’re redistricting her.
Leahy: Yeah, but anyway, so we’ll see how that plays out. Now, let’s switch gears. I would say at present if you had to do the odds. I haven’t even looked at the odd makers who say it’s probably Hillary Clinton who would have the best odds of getting the nomination. I can’t even believe I’m saying that, but that’s how bad the field is there. Now let’s switch gears. All right, look at the Republican side. All the polls show that in the polling, Donald Trump has, like a 45 point lead over anybody on the Republican side. I think in second place would be DeSantis, although I don’t think DeSantis would run against Trump.
Simon: No, I don’t think so either, because he has an advantage, too, of being younger.
Leahy: He’s like 45, 46.
Simon: He’s got many years ahead of him. But it’s still an unknown because we don’t know. Trump is looking pretty fit these days.
Leahy: He is.
Simon: But it’s still three years away. And also there’s an outlier idea that everybody talks about it, which I think is fantastic if he would do it. And that is the Speaker of the House, as we know, doesn’t have to be a congressman. It could be anybody the House majority votes in. So they could vote Trump as Speaker of the House. I think that would be a hoot.
Leahy: That would be very interesting.
Simon: Secondly, look, Trump is a man with a giant ego. (Laughter) That’s news to no one on the planet. That would give him something unique in history and open the way for DeSantis to be the President. It would be an amazing situation. Whether it would happen is hard to say. Remote.
Leahy: It’s hard to say. It’s like doing one of these political novels, right. You’re trying to think, of course. Let me just stop. And some of the premises in political novels, like, 10 years ago that might have been considered outlandish today they think, well, of course. Let’s go back to November 2022 Republicans sweep the House. Right? And they’ve got a significant majority. What would be the reason to name Donald Trump the Speaker and if he were named the Speaker, how would he define that job?
Simon: I’m not quite sure I can give you the answer this second, because we have to wait and see. But how it could happen? He could want it. If he wanted it…
Leahy: He might be able to get it.
Simon: Yes. Right now, Kevin McCarthy is sitting there.
Leahy: McCarthy the minority leader of the House. Although his rhetoric has heated up a tad, he reminds me more of a surrender Republican like the late minority Republican leader Bob Michael from Illinois. Remember him way back when?
Simon: I sure do. But, yes, he’s been an established Republican for a while. I met him years ago in LA at an event of Hollywood Conservatives. He came to visit the event. A lot of politicians did. And I’m thinking this guy is an interesting backbencher from Bakersfield. (Chuckles) And then I turn around and all of a sudden, he’s a minority leader. So he has skills. He has negotiating skills, internal negotiating skills. And like a good Speaker candidate, he controls the money.
Leahy: That’s the key isn’t it? Controls the money.
Simon: That was what made Pelosi Pelosi for years.
Leahy: Yeah. She controls the money. Yeah, it would be fun. I think, being the speaker as third in line. Actually, second in line. Because first in line is the Vice President, right? Second in line is the speaker to the presidency. That would be a fun thing. I don’t think he has any interest whatsoever in running the day-to-day House of Representatives. And I don’t think he’d have a comparative advantage there.
Simon: You might be. You’re asking me to speculate. And I’m not the one who came up with that idea. I’ve seen it all over.
Leahy: Steve Bannon was one of the first I saw who advanced it.
Simon: Was it Bannon who did it?
Leahy: Of course, because it’s a Bannon thing.
Simon: It’s a Bannon kind of idea.
Leahy: It’s a Bannon kind of idea, right?
Simon: Yeah.
Leahy: Meaning it’s out there and makes people think about it.
Simon: If it’s a Bannon idea you can bet that Trump heard about it. But other than that, I guess he’s going to be the nominee. And the only danger of him being the nominee is that he electrifies people.
Leahy: On the plus and on the negative. We’ll elaborate on that when we get back.
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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.
