Why are Tennessee Republicans Terrified of David Hatley?

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

From the Principal Toyota Studios, it's Morning in Memphis with Todd Starnes.

Todd Starnes (0:08)

I've been waiting to say this for months now. You might want to grab a sweater if you're gonna be out tonight. Hello, everybody. I hope you're having a great start to your Wednesday. It is hump day. The gradient is beautiful outside, folks. 65 degrees right now at the Memphis Zoo. And it is gonna get up into the 80s today, before dropping back into the 60s tonight. I'm just gonna go ahead and say now, if you're gonna go out to Shelby Farms and do the loop around the Baptist Promenade, you better get there early to get a parking spot, because there are gonna be a lot of people outdoors this evening enjoying this incredible weather after your Wednesday night church services. We have a great show for you today, everybody. And again, one of the things that we've committed to do here at The Mighty 990 is provide you with direct access to all of the candidates running for office. And yesterday, we did a great interview, a sit-down interview with Charlie Hatcher, who wants to be the next congressman from the 5th Congressional District, made a couple of headlines. So first of all, he said if elected, he plans on creating a redneck caucus. And well, he also had some things to say about you people complaining about the price of beef. We'll get to that in just a moment. But today, we have David Hatley joining us in just a little while. He's going to be on for an entire half hour of the morning show. David Hatley is really causing a lot of chaos right now within Tennessee politics. And we're going to sit down with him, get to know David, get to know his position on some of the big issues. We're also going to be taking your calls as well. Or maybe you have a question that you would like us to pose to Mr. Hatley. And we'll be happy to do that. I want you to write down our number, 901-260-5926.

That's 901-260-5926.

But again, we want KWAM to be the place where you can get the exclusive conversations with all of the candidates, Republican and Democrat, who are running for office. And again, it's about part of this is all about having a conversation. By the way, a couple of big stories brewing locally. You folks in Collierville, my word, they need, Bravo just needs to set up shop in the town square. The amount of drama involving Collierville politics right now is off the charts. The headline in this morning's Daily Memphian, most Collierville aldermen say they would not have fired Selberg. Pardon me, but that is a load of Grade A fertilizer, ladies and gentlemen.

I say that because they could have stood up and put a stop to this nonsense from day one. And if in fact that's the case, hire the guy back. That's what they... Again, if this headline is in fact accurate. But anyway, what a mess there. And I suspect one of the reasons for this story is there are a lot of very angry townsfolk, and many of them have pulled petitions. They're gonna run, they're gonna challenge the current lineup of elected leaders there in Collierville. They've got the mayor and the board of Aldermen. And of course, the town administrator, Molly Maynard, is out. So, and it looks like you good people, the taxpayers of Collierville, are picking up the tab on all of that as well. What a mess in Collierville. Come on, folks, you guys can do better.

901-260-5926, our telephone number. Another story we're following, and this is really fascinating.

Enrollment numbers in universities here in Memphis are not looking good. And we decided to do a little deep dive and to see how other states were dealing with their enrollment numbers. We're going to share that in just a moment, but what's really interesting are the University of Memphis numbers and the University of Memphis and Christian Brothers. Christian Brothers, in between 2025 and 2026, they lost nearly a third of its student population. They were hoping for a big surge and influx of students in the fall. That did not happen. According to the numbers, they only added seven students. So they've got about 1,039 students there on campus. Now, the University of Memphis, the big question is, why aren't kids going back to college? And because we did a deep dive on community colleges, and we also took a look at trade schools. And let me just say this, in West Tennessee, trade school enrollment numbers are through the roof. I mean, near record numbers. So you're seeing a lot of kids graduating high school and they're realizing, you know what? I'm not gonna be able to make a living or have a family if I have a degree in, I don't know, a lesbian, a lesbian macrame. I think that's a degree program at the University of Memphis. So anyway, Southwest Community College over right off of I-40 there, a 10% jump in enrollment. That's a huge number. But again, the University of Memphis enrollment declined this fall by about 3.4%.