Live from Music Row Monday 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 GOP candidate for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, Morgan Ortagus in-studio to define her top three legislative priorities if elected to Congress.
Leahy: Crom has questions on policy.
Carmichael: Morgan.
Ortagus: Yes, sir.
Carmichael: If we agree on the premise that our nation is very divided, I’d like to have you explain why you think it’s divided. And if you were elected and could pass any three pieces of legislation …
Ortagus: Three pieces …
Carmichael: … Yes. You get to pass three pieces of legislation. Whatever you’d want to pass. What would you pass?
Ortagus: Those are good. So obviously, I totally agree with your first question about the nation being divided. I think that the one thing that President Trump taught all of us in the Republican Party is how to stand up for ourselves and how to fight back.
And I don’t know that we were doing that in the election cycles before him. I think that there was still a lot of concern from the leadership in our party in those times about how do we get the mainstream media to like us, how are we accepted by these institutions?
And I think that President Trump sort of freed us from worrying about needing to be accepted by all of these liberal institutions. And once you sort of take that on and say, you know what? The media is never going to love me. I had to do that.
Certainly, as his State Department spokesperson, once you got over that and knew that you were fighting for your values and for the right thing, I think that’s when we became successful.
So I say the backdrop of all of that is because he taught us how to fight and how to stand up for what we believe in, which has sort of caused mainstream media and social media to melt down whenever conservatives actually stand up for themselves.
Carmichael: I want to get to know the three pieces of legislation.
Ortagus: Sure.
Carmichael: If you could pass three pieces of legislation, whatever they are, what would you pass?
Ortagus: The first one, I think would definitely have to be to restore funding to build the wall. There’s nothing more timely and important right now than the national security, the security of our own nation.
We were able to secure the border under President Trump. He started to build the wall at the State Department. Mike Pompeo and our team negotiated the Remain in Mexico agreements and the asylum cooperation agreements in the Northern Triangle countries.
There is a path. The border situation, the way it is right now, it doesn’t have to be that way. And I think the Biden team is sort of quietly trying to walk back to some of the policies that we enacted that were successful.
So the first thing that you have to do is build the wall. I think, secondly, when you look at jobs and the economy at the moment, we have to stand against the massive rampant spending that’s going on in Washington.
It’s causing inflation that’s 7.5 percent. I also think when you look at our military, President Biden, his budget last year had an increase for all agencies except three: DHS, DOD, and the Department of Justice.
And at a time when our border is being overrun, at a time of clearly massive national security issues around the world. Look at our nuclear posture, for example. Our listeners may not know this, but we couldn’t build a new nuclear weapon right now if we wanted to.
China is not constrained by any of the treaties that we are in. They’re building at a rapid pace that we probably could keep up with. The Russians are doing so as well. Sorry.
Leahy: One last question. Here on your website, you say you support school choice in getting the federal government out of the classroom. That’s on your campaign website. Would you support abolishing the Department of Education?
Ortagus: Yes, absolutely.
Leahy: Good point.
Carmichael: That was quick.
Leahy: Good answer.
Carmichael: What about Jack Kennedy?
Leahy: I know where you’re going with that. Ask it quickly.
Carmichael: You can think about it during the break. Jack Kennedy in 1961 wrote an executive order allowing government employees to unionize. Then legislation was passed in the ’60s to put it into law.
Leahy: If I can put that question simply, would you support ending public government sector unions?
Ortagus: Yes. And I want to expand upon this. Because I want to talk about my own experience.
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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 “Tennessee Senate Chamber” by Terrance CC 3.0.
