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 Roger Simon in studio to discuss the 2024 GOP presidential nomination race.
Leahy: Roger Simon is in the studio with us. Roger is our all-star panelist. Roger, I recently turned 68 years old.
Simon: A kid!
Leahy: A kid! A real spring chicken. I have never in my life been more concerned that we are on the brink of World War III…
Simon: With good reason.
Leahy: Than I am today. My take on this is we have as our leader, our legal but not legitimate commander in chief, perhaps the worst foreign policy decision-maker ever.
Simon: I’ll tell you when it started.
Leahy: When did this start?
Simon: There’s an absolutely easy way to say it. On day one of the Biden administration, when he put the brakes on the Keystone Two pipeline, Vladimir Putin went, yay! Because that changed the whole global picture of energy.
The United States, which formally could have been giving all the energy that Europe needed to provide it in a war against Putin, was over. And Putin said to himself, oh, boy, we got an idiot in the White House and I’m on the move. And that’s when it happened.
Leahy: When you put it that way, Roger, I think you’re probably right. That was the beginning of it.
Simon: And during the Trump administration, the media was complaining, oh, Trump loves Putin, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But Putin didn’t do anything. All of sudden day one, it’s all over.
Leahy: And let’s come back a little bit back to the 2020 election. The reason that Trump and so many others fought so hard against the way the election irregularities went through the process, the reason that they fought so hard against that is because they knew that Biden’s weakness would lead to a decline in American interest in a big way.
Simon: His weakness plus greed. Anybody with IQ over 100 should be able to tell that the Biden family was totally corrupt with not only Russia but China. Now we have Xi making an alliance with Putin. Nothing could be worse than that.
Leahy: I agree completely. I had the opportunity to talk to somebody over the weekend who is a Navy pilot, and I’d ask him, what happens if there’s a war with China? And he had a three-word answer to that. We all die.
Simon: What else could it be?
Leahy: That’s not good. I don’t want to die.
Simon: It might be good for space aliens to come and take over the planet or something, but that’s about the only person they could be for whatever they’re called.
Leahy: I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Our children don’t want to die.
Simon: No. Who does? But if there’s a single Democrat out there listening to this, I would review how you make your decisions. I really would seriously do that. I used to be a Democrat.
Leahy: I was, too, until 1984.
Simon: You are a victim of hypnosis now of the worst sort, and because this is so clear and so evident that it’s almost tragic. And I don’t even know how these people do it. Have you all had a lobotomy? What’s going on?
Leahy: Well, there’s some of that. I do think, though, that combination of the worst possible commander-in-chief for this moment in history, because he has a combination of greed, arrogance…
Simon: Stupidity.
Leahy: Unwarranted stupidity, and unwarranted aggressiveness. And you put them all together, and you are moving toward World War III.
Simon: Now, let’s hope it won’t happen.
Leahy: No, I agree.
Simon: Let’s hope and pray, but also pay real attention at the ballot box because this ain’t going away.
Leahy: So here’s the thing. We are now in February of 2023.
Simon: You had to check your phone for that?
Leahy: Yes. February 2023. And, Roger, the next president will not be inaugurated until January 2025.
Simon: This is a long while.
Leahy: This is a year and 10 months. What I am concerned about is, first, it is going to be a huge battle and an uphill battle, I believe, for whoever the Republican nominee is to win the Electoral College and become president. It’s going to be a huge battle. It’s winnable.
Simon: Yes. But it will be a huge battle. It is winnable. And I think they really have to concentrate on what has gone wrong and really explain it to people in very clear teams. We need a really articulate person. Watching Hannity last night, I don’t believe any of the ones.
So far, there are only three people who I think are articulate enough to explain it. One is Trump. He’s very good at that. And the other is DeSantis. And the third one is Vivek. Vivek. I think the rest of them forget it. They shouldn’t even be there.
Leahy: You would then agree with me, and my new characterization of the 2024 race for the GOP nomination is Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, dark horse Vivek, and the Munchkins.
Simon: Absolutely agree.
Leahy: I think that’s a good way to describe it.
Simon: Also elevates Vivek, which will elevate the discussion. The best part about his running, I think he is a dark horse and is unlikely to win, although anything is possible. But on the debate stage, he is going to make this thing much more interesting.
Leahy: And he will advance an agenda that needs to be discussed.
Simon: Exactly.
Leahy: And that is going to be very important.
Simon: The rest of them are just cliche-ridden. Same old, same old.
Leahy: I listened to Pence the other night, and I thought, which cliche are we going to throw out now?
Simon: (Chuckles) It’s quite amazing.
Leahy: What a snore fest he is.
Simon: They don’t realize it. And even Haley’s very old-fashioned. And listening to Tim Scott last night on the Hannity show, my eyes were rolling backward. What is that guy doing? Nothing of importance.
Leahy: So let’s talk about this. Let’s assume that we are able to win the presidency back for Republicans and how we’re going to make it through the next year and 10 months. I’m very worried about that.
Simon: Prayer helps.
Leahy: Yes, that’s good. Is there anything that can be done given the current structure of our military decision-making and the woke military? It seems like a very bad formula.
Simon: People like us have a big contribution to make, which is to point it out.
Leahy: Keep talking.
Simon: Writing and talking and getting the information out there. One of the real problems and I hope the listeners can help with this, is that we are preaching to the choir most of the time.
Leahy: And we got to get it out to the other folks.
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 “Vivek Ramaswamy” by Vivek Ramaswamy.
