Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Tennessee Star, reflected on the Tea Party movement’s impact on the nation exactly 16 years after the movement’s first notable public events took place in February 2009.
Leahy, an original organizer of the Tea Party movement, said a number of events took place throughout 2009 as part of the national movement.
The first coordinated day of action took place on February 27, 2009 in Chicago and cities across the nation – just days after CNBC’s Rick Santelli delivered live remarks from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, in which he opposed the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan and called for a Chicago Tea Party.
On Tax Day 2009, nearly 1,000 Tea Party demonstrations took place across the country, making it the movement’s largest single day of action.
“On February 27th, 2009, there were about 50 little rag-tag Tea Party events around the country. That expanded to about 1,000 events on April 15th, 2009 with a million people in attendance. I was one of the organizers of this,” Leahy said on Thursday’s edition of his talk radio program, The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Prior to the nationwide events in 2009, Leahy said he and other prominent organizers of the movement – including Jenny Beth Martin, Dana Loesch, Bill Hennessey, Gina Loudon, Mark Meckler, and The Star’s Christina Botteri – coordinated and created the online community “Top Conservatives on Twitter” in the months before.
“The Tea Party movement ended up establishing three core values: constitutionally limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility,” Leahy said.
Leahy noted the Tea Party movement can be attributed as the origin of the current America First movement spearheaded by President Donald Trump.
“The origin of the MAGA movement goes back to literally 16 years ago today, the first really big public event of the Tea Party movement,” Leahy said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
