The Battleground State Report, airing Fridays at 8 am CST with Michael Patrick Leahy and Doug Kellett – is a one-hour radio show from Star News Digital Media in the early stages of national weekend syndication roll out. With Kellett out of the studio, Leahy discussed the recent rise of national populism in the United States.
During the show, Leahy went into detail about the two factors that are directly influencing the rise of a conservative populism movement. He noted that recent threats to second amendment rights in Virginia and the refugee resettlement issue in Tennessee are fueling the anti-big government push back.
Leahy: The other big story here is and I’ll talk about it in two issues. The other big story is the rise of grassroots conservative populism around the country. And pushing back against shall we say the administration of state government. Governors in the state government.
And there’s two. I’ll mention the first one, I won’t really get into detail about that in this segment.I’ll talk about the second. The first one is, it started off in the state of Virginia where the governor there, governor Northam. You know the guy who was in blackface and claimed he wasn’t and doesn’t remember it.
Producer Tidwell: Oh yeah.
Leahy: The same guy that said, you know, with regards to abortion we may have a live birth but if we don’t want to keep the baby we’ll have a discussion about whether or not to keep them after they’re born right? After that discussion, we might do something. We might terminate them after they’re born. That guy. Really nice guy.
Tidwell: Yeah.
Leahy: He apparently has threatened to go in and confiscate the guns of certain kinds of guns from Virginians. Not very popular with most counties in Virginia. And so now we’ve had what’s called the second amendment sanctuary county resolutions going on. And I think the vast majority of Virginian counties have signed on to that.
There’s a little bit of the second amendment, anti-big government rebellion going on in the state of Virginia and it’s spreading around the country. Now, there’s another issue going on having to do with the refugee resettlement program.
And it’s here in Tennessee of course where the governor Bill Lee has made a very bad decision to say, welcome refugees! He’s not the only Republican governor to do that and we’ll talk about that here in a second. The setting and the background are the refugees who have been allowed to come into the United States since 1980.
That’s when the refugee act of 1980 was passed by Congress and signed into law by Jimmy Carter. And what that says is basically there’s a process for handling refugees. And the first part of the process is handled overseas by the United Nations where they put together a process where they vet refugees who are looking to leave their worn-torn countries. Or looking to leave their country period. Guess which country in the world takes the vast majority of refugees?
Tidwell: United States.
Leahy: Ding ding ding. That’s been historically the case. Now they have a security vetting of some level and a medical vetting. And again, not that strong. I’ve documented that a lot in some of the writings I’ve done at Breitbart. I’m just describing the process and not necessarily the quality of the vetting which has improved on the security side under President Trump. But really not improved at all on the medical side. The way this law works Jimmy is this.
The President, every fiscal year sets a cap as to the number of refugees who will be resettled in the United States under this process. That is the sort of vetting through this UN process. They get the green light and then the Department of State the Bureau of Population of Refugees and Migrants decide what states they’re going to be settled in.
And then once they are here, they are paid by the office of refugee resettlement which is the health and human services department. Barack Obama was bringing refugees in from hotbeds of terrorism. Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and they were having problems.
They weren’t assimilating because the bureaucracy that handles this had said, oh, we’re not going to assimilate anymore. That’s been their policy for almost 20 years since Bill Clinton. It caused problems in communities where they settled.
Listen to the full show here:
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Tune in every Friday morning and listen to The Battleground State Report with Michael Patrick Leahy and Doug Kellett.
