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 whether presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will be able to connect with young Democrat voters.
Leahy: In studio, State Representative Sabi Kumar and Roger Simon. Roger, you’re writing a book, The Making of the President 2024, and you’re about to go on a little bit of a travel tour.
Simon: I’m not writing the book yet. First of all, I’m going out for The Epoch Times to cover the endless American presidential elections because they begin exactly when the last one ended. They never stopped. I’m going off at the crack of dawn tomorrow to northern New Hampshire.
To get there from Nashville is a trek and I’m going to join up there with Vivek Ramaswamy who early in his campaign is now doing a tour of New Hampshire counties very early because as people know, New Hampshire’s a very early state. It’s the first primary state after Iowa has the first caucus.
And then I am going at the end of that dropping down to Boston, which is not that big a trip at that point because Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Is going to be formally announcing his campaign. Everybody knows now who has been paying attention that he intends to run.
He’s going to be making a formal announcement at a hotel in Boston of his campaign, which is a rather interesting event in political history now because it will disrupt the Democrats. He’s the opposite of the kind of Democrat that we’ve been seeing for the last two administrations.
Leahy: He’s a big critic of Dr. Fauci and forced vaccines.
Simon: He wrote a book about it.
Leahy: It was a bestseller.
Simon: I actually read a good deal of his 800 pages or something like that. The thing about Robert Kennedy, Jr. is he’s not casual. He’s a very smart guy as opposed to the president and it’s going to cause them a problem because he is a Kennedy. The other Kennedys of course, don’t like him as much because they want to fade into the woodwork.
Leahy: Caroline was first the ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama and is now the ambassador to Australia under Joe Biden.
Simon: She’s part of the club, but he’s not. He’s his own man. And he’s going to cause a lot of problems because if he asked for a debate against, Joe Biden, it’s going to be a very interesting phenomenon because the difference in IQ might be 30 points.
Leahy: Maybe more. I think Biden is losing IQ points every day.
Simon: I don’t know if Dr. Kumar here knows this, he probably does. But the American IQ has diminished in the last 15 or 20 years. Did you know that?
Kumar: I think so.
Simon: They have records. They have test scores that have gone down.
Kumar: Among our young people, I believe it’s probably related to, especially in teenagers using marijuana.
Simon: That’s part of it.
Leahy: We were talking a little bit during the break, you’re not jumping into endorsing a GOP candidate yet. Although it’s interesting cuz you’re from India. Born in India. We have now two Indian Americans running for the GOP candidacy. Nikki Haley, as from South Carolina, former governor, and former UN ambassador. And then our good buddy, Vivek Ramaswamy, 37 years old, worth half a billion dollars.
Kumar: That’s right.
Leahy: Harvard undergrad. Yale Law, a very bright guy.
Simon: And junior tennis champion.
Leahy: Just a great guy and the anti-woke champion. So as an Indian American, what do you attribute all this success of Vivek and Nicki and the others?
Kumar: I attribute it to, as Warren Buffet said, the greatest gift he had in his life was to be born in America. I attribute this to basically the American opportunity that’s available. And what this country can do, and these people have used that in the right way and have been able to reach higher levels. It’s a tremendous accomplishment on part of these people, but again, they were made possible by being in America.
Simon: I’d love to hear you say that, but I want to put a caveat into it. And the caveat is the American population is in danger of declining. And we depend on a growing population. India has a growing population and some say it’s already passed China in population. It’s very hard to count this which would mean probably 50 years from now, India will be the power, and you’ll have come to the wrong country. (Laughter) That’s the history.
Kumar: Sincerely, yes. It is not the numbers in a population alone, but it is again the education, achievements, and other things that make a country. And, of course, these are both democracies. Coming back to democracy, it is interesting or it is unbelievable to me that these representatives whom we expelled have made an issue that we are anti-democratic.
If we were anti-democratic, they would not have the platform that they have the freedom to speak and – that they have the freedom to enter. When they took over the House of Representatives as a hostage, do you think that was a democratic action?
Simon: Of course not.
Kumar: They were holding the House hostage.
Simon: They don’t want democracy. These guys really want communism.
Kumar: Sure. But it is wrong to take a tragedy and make it about themselves. We have to realize, we have to remember first things first, the basics that a terrible tragedy happened in Nashville at the Covenant Presbyterian School.
Leahy: A very good point. This is a tragedy that these two guys, with the three of them, have made it all about themselves.
Simon: The worst part is what it did to the kids. It is a form of child abuse, what they do. And they’re reprehensible, but we got to learn how to treat them so that they don’t exploit us.
Leahy: I want to come back to it on the presidential thing, and you talked about younger people not really being as knowledgeable, shall we say. We’ll be kind. The reality of America and how it’s being exploited by the left.
Let’s take a look at the Democratic campaign, the Bobby Kennedy, Jr. versus Joe Biden thing. Is Bobby Kennedy, Jr. Gonna be able to make any progress with younger voters who are Democrats in the Democratic primary?
Simon: The answer is, I don’t know, because it is going to be a fascinating thing to watch because indeed Biden cannot communicate anymore. He just stutters and he’s just senile, he’s prematurely senile. Actually, he shouldn’t be that bad at that age.
Leahy: Representative Kumar, you want to add something to that?
Kumar: Yes, what I wanted to say was one, our president is elderly certainly.
Leahy: You are such a kind person.
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 “Robert Kennedy Jr.” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
