One of the most significant Supreme Court decisions this term was Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned a case — Chevron — that resulted in deference to the administrative state. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.), who spent years as Missouri’s attorney general, praised the decision for “turn[ing] the tables in favor of the little guy” in an exclusive interview with the Washington Reporter.
Prior to the Loper Bright decision, the status quo was “Woodrow Wilson’s dream,” and Schmitt views Wilson as “arguably the worst president of all time.” The playing field was “tilted heavily for the so-called experts, these bureaucrats who are hidden in buildings,” he said.
“This behemoth of federal authority has crushed lives and livelihoods and freedoms all along the way,” Schmitt said. “Take COVID, for example. How did OSHA, the agency created to make sure forklifts would beep when they backed up, somehow get the authority to force a medical procedure on 100 million people? Well, the answer is, it didn’t. They just wanted to do it, and they were just going to push the envelope, because it’s all about ultimate power and control.”
Almost immediately after the landmark decision, Schmitt launched a working group to discuss government post-Chevron deference. But, he hasn’t gotten much buy-in from Democrats. “Sadly, I think some Democrats like the idea of people doing their bidding and not having to ever vote” on policies, he said. “Now, that would probably be true among some Republicans too.”
As an attorney general, Schmitt launched some of the state’s highest-profile cases. He first received national recognition with his lawsuit that ultimately “prohibited several federal agencies and officials of the Biden administration from working with social media companies about ‘protected speech,’” the Associated Press reported. Schmitt called the case “one of the biggest free speech cases in the history of the country.”
At the time Schmitt filed the lawsuit, “Elon Musk didn’t own Twitter, and Congressman Jim Jordan wasn’t holding hearings,” he said. “We got these reams of emails, tens of thousands of pages of emails, text messages of this over the top behavior to censor, whether it was on COVID or mask mandates or efficacy of vaccines or the Hunter Biden laptop. They were working overtime to put pressure on social media companies to silence dissent.”
Schmitt also led the way on filing the lawsuit that stopped what he calls “Joe Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness scam.”
When asked about rumors that he may be a candidate for Attorney General of the United States under the next Republican administration, Schmitt gave what he called a “very Washington” answer: “I’m not focused on that at all.”
Regardless of the outcome of November’s elections, Schmitt has a “reform agenda” he’d like the Senate implement.
“The judges that are coming before the Senate for confirmation are not even qualified, setting aside that their ideology is super radical,” The Missouri lawmaker also wants “to open up this process. We ought to democratize the process; people ought to be able to offer amendments. We should have individual appropriation bills come up, be debated, freely amended…actually legislate.”
Schmitt’s legal work is just beginning, he added.
“Whether it’s DEI, whether it’s censorship, the Democrats — this is not Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill talking about marginal tax rates — are serious about if they get control of the White House, the House, and Senate, about blowing the filibuster up, packing the Supreme Court, adding states to the union, federalizing our elections,” he said.
While Schmitt’s home state of Missouri produced Democratic president Harry S. Truman, it’s taken a sharp turn rightwards in recent years. Much of the Senate map is playing out on red-trending states like Schmitt’s. He offered simple advice to Republican candidates trying to oust Democratic incumbents this November: “you just kind of have to be yourself.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with Sen. Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.), lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
You were Missouri’s attorney general for years. Why is the Supreme Court overturning Chevron deference important? How does this decision affect your constituents?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
The best place to start with that is with the case itself, the Loper Bright case, and what the facts of the case were. That’s a good way to relate it to people. There were these fishermen, and their livelihood is to go out on a boat and catch fish and provide for their family. Never before were they required to pay for these observers. The agency just decided, all of a sudden, you have to pay for these observers to be in your boat to make sure you’re doing certain things. That had never existed before. Congress never said that’s what should happen. They just decided that ‘we’re going to change the rules, and that’s what we’re gonna do.’ So they brought the lawsuit, and ultimately the Supreme Court said, ‘you don’t have that ability. We’re not gonna abide by this decades old Chevron deference anymore.’ It turns the tables in favor of the little guy. There’s also some, probably the cases of veterans who tried to sue for benefits, but the rules got changed on them. If you look at this as, what’s the playing field been? It’s been tilted heavily for the so-called experts, these bureaucrats who are hidden in buildings. Now, I guess they wouldn’t show up in these buildings anymore. It’s like 16 percent of the workforce is there, but they are, hidden away, totally unaccountable. You certainly can’t vote these people out, but sometimes you don’t even know that the agency even existed. And so if you’re a small business owner, or you’re somebody trying to obtain benefits, like a veteran, like I said, you’ve had the deck stacked against you, and you’d have to file a lawsuit and all those things. The switch in Chevron now puts the onus if you’re going to change the rules of the game, if you’re going to enact a policy change, we should, Congress should, be the ones that have to go do that, because ultimately it leads to greater accountability. You know then, when I’m up for election, what I was responsible for. I just think it’s a sea change the burden that now gets put on these agencies, as opposed to the little guy. It puts our power back in the Article One branch where it should have been, where the Founders always wanted it to be. And that’s a big shift. And I think, over the decades, this behemoth of federal authority has crushed lives and livelihoods and freedoms all along the way. Take COVID, for example. How did OSHA, the agency created to make sure forklifts would beep when they backed up, somehow get the authority to force a medical procedure on 100 million people? Well, the answer is, it didn’t. They just wanted to do it, and they were just going to push the envelope, because it’s all about ultimate power and control. And so, more philosophically, this is like Woodrow Wilson’s dream. He was arguably the worst president of all time. His vision was to take the people out of the equation and say ‘if you’re not smart enough to figure this out, we’re going to have a small class of experts do it for you.’ And so to me, it’s a much larger thing about putting the power back in individuals, putting it back in the Article One branch. But ultimately, as far as how it relates to people’s lives, the costs associated with this stuff, of complying with these things, let’s say you’ve got a small business, or you’ve got a restaurant or whatever. It doesn’t mean that that you’re not going to have safety regulations. It not doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have clean water or clean air, it just means that when you make a major decision like this, it is Congress that should act.
Washington Reporter:
You immediately launched a working group on this after the Supreme Court’s decision. Do you have a vision of what you want that to ultimately yield?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
For me, given my experience as attorney general, a lot of the lawsuits we filed were based on this idea that the federal government was overstepping its bounds via various agencies. We filed the student loan debt forgiveness case, for example. The Department of Education, through the stroke of President Joe Biden’s pen, had no authority to wipe away a half a trillion dollars of student loan debt. If you want to do it, we should have a vote on it. But the case sort of stood for that proposition. So I think the experience of finding these unconstitutional actions, by way of these agencies, gave me a view of how broad this is. Our goal right now in leading that working group is to bring as many people that want to be involved and figure out what those solutions might be. One might be, as this now goes back to lower courts with Chevron being overturned, what you don’t want to have is some other standard by another name take its place. So I do think Congress now has an important role to play and say ‘what is that review?’ Should it be a de novo review, which is something I support, meaning these agencies can weigh in, but it wouldn’t be any more valuable than an amicus brief by a trade association or a union, saying, ‘hey, here’s how we think you should rule.’ Ultimately, the courts are going to decide based on what the law is. That’s one piece of it. I also think more fundamental structural reform needs to happen, where, if you’re proposing a new rule, something like the REINS Act, it has an economic impact of X that before that rule goes into effect, Congress should have a vote on it. I think that would be a really significant reform, but those are just two ideas. So the point of the working group now is gather ideas. What do we want to see come from this? Because we have a pretty unique opportunity now that what wasn’t working has been overturned to kind of weigh in now, which is what we should be doing.
Washington Reporter:
And what’s the Democrats’ level of interest and input in doing their jobs in the wake of the Chevron case?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
It’s interesting. I would hope that as people elected that they would share the same concern that you would have a bunch of unelected bureaucrats making these decisions. But sadly, I think some Democrats like the idea of people doing their bidding and not having to ever vote on these sorts of things. Now, that would probably be true among some Republicans too, right? I think in general, Congress has kind of ceded away a lot of this authority. But my view of it is, it could be that a Republican administration that Democrats don’t like something about. And for me, this really isn’t about who is in charge. Now, I think the left, quite frankly, has captured every other institution, whether it’s higher ed, or it’s Hollywood, and I think a lot of the permanent Washington establishment is very much aligned with them, and and so maybe that’s tempting for them to hold on to that kind of level of power and control. But the game is changing after Chevron, and I think this is about good government.
Washington Reporter:
You’re not up for reelection this year, but Missouri gave us Harry Truman, and there’s a history of Democrats being elected here. On the Senate map, what advice do you have for the Republican candidates running in states like Missouri, in the sense that they are very red states with Democratic senators? Are there lessons from your own statewide races that you think they should be taking to heart in the final weeks?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
I think the most important currency anybody has when running for office is authenticity. I think you just kind of have to be yourself. And over the course of a campaign, especially something like a Senate campaign, which, other than running for president, is the most scrutiny you’re going to get, people see who’s real and who’s phony. So I think you have to be yourself. Missourians have always been, even when Democrats were running the state, distrustful of a Washington a thousand miles away, telling them how to live their lives. So there’s something in our DNA that doesn’t like Washington meddling in our affairs. And so for me, coming from being attorney general and taking all of those important fights that we took, and winning, I think they were looking for somebody who’s gonna go fight for them. And I think that’s probably true in a lot of states that are up for grabs this go-around, because what they see is they see people who seemingly are completely out of touch with their daily lives. Everything’s gotten way more expensive because of reckless spending. Everything’s gotten more expensive in part because of that. Also, we are the first country in the history of the world to declare war on our own energy sources. Most countries have gone to war in order to be able to access energy; we have all the energy we’ll ever need in this country forever. But somehow this, this sort of woke, climate alarmist agenda, is really affecting our national security and our economic security. So I think if people fight for those things, the things that people really care about in their lives, we will be successful. That’s my take on it. And I also think there can be a bubble in this town. I think staying connected to the things that matter in your state is really important, because a lot of times things that we’re talking about in a Senate lunch or something is just not what people are talking about back home. And so I will not lose that.
Washington Reporter:
One of your things you’ve been working on has been pushing back on DEI, in the military in particular. Do you see this administration prioritizing DEI over actual willingness to fight wars? We talked about this with the Rep. Jim Banks, who hopes to join SASC with you when he wins. What are you seeing in these hearings you attend?
Sen. Eric Schimtt:
I think the political class, these political appointees, have this obsession with DEI, and it’s affecting our readiness. It’s affecting recruiting. The fundamental nature of DEI is cultural Marxism. It’s oppressor versus oppressed in every room. And that’s antithetical to what the military is supposed to be. The military is supposed to be this great meritocracy, where no matter who you are, whatever your background is — you can come from the poorest part of the country, and have a ticker-tape parade come for you in New York City because you’re a war hero. There’s Omar Bradley, who was a Missouri version of that. He was a farm kid from Missouri who was one of the great generals in World War II. John Pershing, by the way, was also from Missouri, but there’s a lot of examples of that. I think these social experiments that Democrats are hell bent on forcing on everything, just don’t belong in the military. I don’t think we should have racial quotas for officers. You’ve seen memos in that regard. I challenged a lot of our political leadership on this too, but they fired around 8,000 well-trained military men and women because they didn’t get a COVID shot, and they did nothing to get them back. And when they finally sent a letter, surprise, surprise, because of the way they were treated, some of them just weren’t interested in coming back. Those are very political moves that this administration has made. I think that’s turned off a lot of people, and it does affect readiness. If you don’t think it affects readiness that we have 8,000 fewer well trained people, you’re in denial. If you don’t think we’re losing good people because they don’t want to be called racist all day long, you’re in denial. But you look at NASA, and you keep seeing this stuff seeping out. I think it’s going underground now a little bit more, because people know that there’s a lot of backlash to this sort of race essentialism that is DEI, but these struggle sessions that people have to go through just because they work at NASA are nuts, like it really is nuts. And so I’m just going to keep raising the issue, but we’ve been successful in the NDAA. We’ve gotten the language in there to get rid of DEI hires. We’re going to continue that. We’ve got a bill that would eliminate DEI officers in every branch of government, in every office. I just think this stuff is, for a lot of people, they jump on this bandwagon. It was a huge mistake. But for Democrats, again, this is almost a civil religion kind of obsession. But I think the American people are with us on this too.
Washington Reporter:
If you look at the data, from August 2021 to now, we’ve seen huge hits to military recruitment. You met with some of the Gold Star families who were here to receive the Congressional Gold Medal. To my knowledge, there has been no oversight of this from the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats. Is there no interest in learning from these mistakes on the Senate side?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
No, there isn’t, and it’s just a shame. You name the issue, and the Democrats are just not engaged at all. Whether it’s Afghanistan or any of the other debacles. But Afghanistan really hits home. We heard and saw at the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony those 13 men and women who volunteered to serve the country, whose lives were lost over just really stupid political decisions. And Vice President Kamala Harris bragged that she was the last person in the room for the Afghanistan withdrawal planning. I think in a broader sense, too, it opened us up to a lot of the things that you’re seeing around the world now; these dictators and these tyrants smell weakness, and I think they think this administration is weak and they will push the envelope, and it’s put a lot of our allies certainly in danger. You look at what happened with Israel on October 7. None of this stuff happened when President Trump was in office, because they felt like, if they fucked around, they’re going to find out. And so that’s kind of where we’re at. So I think this election is so important on a number of different fronts. I think President Trump comes in as the ultimate disrupter on a lot of these things. I also think they’re still flirting around with the censorship enterprise they were engaged with before. They’re always couching terms like hate speech or disinformation or misinformation. It’s just code for wanting to control what people see and hear, government shows that. If we keep going down this road, I don’t know where the Rubicon is, but once you cross the Rubicon in a free society, it’s hard to go back from that. And so I think whether it’s DEI, whether it’s censorship, the Democrats — this is not Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill talking about marginal tax rates — are serious about if they get control of the White House, the House, and Senate, about blowing the filibuster up, packing the Supreme Court, adding states to the union, federalizing our elections, amnesty and ten million people here illegally being able to vote, they’re already going to be counted in the census. This is about power and control now, and so I think as Republicans, we have to personally recognize where we’re at and be willing to fight back against it. And that’s what I’m trying to do.
Washington Reporter:
If Republicans win control of the Senate, as is expected, what do you want to see differently in how the Senate is run? What are your priorities, irrespective of who’s in the White House?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
I look at it on two different tracks, one on sort of a policy track. I want an agenda that’s more reflective of what people care about in their daily lives. What are we going to do to control spending, to control inflation? I think the most important thing we can do to affect our national security, our economic security, to control inflation, is to absolutely open up energy exploration, production, all of the above energy, be dominant in the world, be exporting LNG to our friends and allies all across the world, have more pipelines, just literally dominate on the energy side; I think that solves a lot of problems. From a foreign policy perspective, I think we have to be honest with ourselves about what our capabilities are, and we have to understand that the 21st century is going to be defined by who wins this great competition between the United States and China. And we talk about it, and there’s some bipartisan agreement on it, but we’re not doing the things necessary for that to be truly a priority for us. On the domestic side, I’m proud that the Republican Party now is a multi-ethnic, working class party, and that gives us a lot of opportunities to speak to real people, hear what their concerns are, and most people don’t follow politics like people do in this town. They just want their kids to have a better life than them, they want to be able to go on vacation. They want to be able to send their kids to schools. They don’t want college to crush them, all these sorts of things that dominate people’s daily lives. That’s what our agenda needs to be focused on. We have a great opportunity, for example, for reconciliation on a lot of these things, like extending the tax cuts and making sure we don’t have a massive tax increase, which Democrats want. There’s a lot on the line. You see right now, the judges that are coming before the Senate for confirmation are not even qualified, setting aside that their ideology is super radical. So I think it would be important to start appointing and confirming judges who understand what their role is. There’s a lot to do on the policy front, I would say internally, I just think we ought to open up this process. We ought to democratize the process; people ought to be able to offer amendments. We should have individual appropriation bills come up, be debated, freely amended, Republicans and Democrats offer their ideas, have it go to the other chamber, have a conference committee — actually legislate. Because right now, as you end up with omnibus monstrosities, where a few people are in charge of literally trillions of dollars worth of spending, and that’s not what people came up here to do. Most people recognize that that’s a huge problem. So I think in our in our leadership elections, that’s certainly something that I’m talking about with the people who are running, and I think there is a bubbling up of not just newer members, certainly among newer members, but also among people who remember what it was like when people actually got to do those things and they were involved in the process. So that’s a reform agenda that I think would be good for the Senate.
Washington Reporter:
As you travel across the country, do you feel like Trump is winning?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
I do. I think your currency here for credibility is honesty. The first debate was the knockout blow, literally, of a sitting president. Then, we have the assassination attempt that was before the convention, and you felt like at that point you could see the end zone. Then they had the switcheroo. And I think you just had to recognize that Kamala Harris is going to have a couple of weeks of a honeymoon and a sugar high. And I always believe that this race begins really in earnest after Labor Day, and that’s where we’re at. So yes, I feel like he’s going to win. I think if you look at the battleground states that are going to matter the most, like Pennsylvania, I think he’s going to win. I wish it’d be by a bigger margin. When you look at where that state’s at, there’s a lot of blue collar folks in Pennsylvania who don’t like the direction this country is going, and in the polling you see that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe we’re on the wrong track and we need significant change, and by a two to one margin, Trump is viewed as the disruptor or the change agent. That is a fundamental truth in this race that she can’t get away from, no matter how many interviews she dodges. He’s more trusted on the issues that people care about, like the economy and security and crime and the border and illegal immigration. So I think all those things are to his advantage, and I think he’s gonna win those key battleground states.
Washington Reporter:
You were attorney general once before for Missouri. Is that something that even intrigues you as a possibility, being Attorney General of the United States?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
This is going to be very Washington. I’m just not focused on that at all. I want to help him win. And so I’m doing as much as I can for that to happen. I don’t get too far ahead of myself. I love representing Missouri in the Senate, and I also think he’s the right person for the job. And that’s what my focus is.
Washington Reporter:
What are you seeing from the DOJ in its current form, that are some of the most glaring failures that need fixing?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
Well, I think it’s been such a politicized organization. As a lawyer, I think that really is a shame. There was a time where that was a really respected agency, but I think they’ve done a lot of things, from going after parents who showed up to school board meetings, to going after Catholics, to the weaponization we’ve seen now, and going after a political opponent, is banana public stuff. There’s no other way to put it. If it were happening somewhere else in the world, our State Department would be warning about it. I just think it’s such a dangerous road to go down. Jack Smith was brought on to be their henchman. That’s it, they know who Jack Smith is. Jack Smith overcharges, and I’ll also tell you as an AG who prosecuted political corruption cases, main Justice, which is not the U.S. Attorneys, but main Justice, they don’t approve these kinds of cases, they just don’t. At least they didn’t. Now they do, because they’re trying to get Trump. Whether it’s trying to bankrupt the guy or now, with the criminal lawfare, which we’ve never seen before, that is a department that needs a lot of salvaging now, because it is becoming way too political, which is not good for the country. But that’s what they want, and I think this is another step going down the road of not arguing about policy anymore. They literally were trying to get him off the ballot, they’re trying to put him in jail for the rest of his life. Like I said, this is akin to a Third World dictatorship.
Washington Reporter:
One of the issues that’s been a through line between your AG career and your time in the Senate has been tackling government censorship. First off, how did you become one of the AGs who was the leading advocate for the First Amendment?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
This goes back to before I was even in politics. I always believed that the First Amendment is the beating heart of our Constitution. It is essential to the ideals of our political system of debate, discourse, persuasion, not political violence, but it’s not a fundamental thing. But we decided in this country that was going to be our antidote. And there’s a pressure release valve that we can activate, when people feel like they can be heard. When we take that away, it’s a dangerous road we’re going on. And there’s nothing particularly unique about people in power wanting to silence dissent. But in the United States, that’s supposed to be off limits, because we believe we will be able to speak our mind in the town square. So much of that now is happening in the virtual town square. You’ve had some of the biggest companies in the world who were coordinating with, colluding with the massive power of the federal government, and I don’t care what your ideology is, that ought to be really terrifying. But what’s so disappointing is most of the media is totally absent, because they got the blue jersey on. They don’t really care, and they can justify it because they think ‘Trump’s a threat to democracy.’ Meanwhile, Democrats are literally bulldozing all of these protections and actually destroying democracy — with the caveat that we’re actually a constitutional republic, I’m just using their language about ‘saving democracy.’ I was giving commencement speeches 10 years ago about the First Amendment and protecting somebody’s rights to disagree with someone and to say what they want to say. So I believe in my core, and then as AG I had a chance to take on one of the biggest free speech cases in the history of the country. What it exposed, because you’ve got to go back in time, was important. When we filed that lawsuit, Elon Musk didn’t own Twitter, Rep. Jim Jordan wasn’t holding hearings. We filed this lawsuit, and an important part was the discovery before the preliminary injunction hearing. We got these reams of emails, tens of thousands of pages of emails, text messages of this over the top behavior to censor, whether it was on COVID or mask mandates or efficacy of vaccines or the Hunter Biden laptop. They were working overtime to put pressure on social media companies to silence dissent. So I was really fortunate, it’s a really important case. We’ve got legislation out basically for social media companies, you’ve got to pick, if you’re going to be involved in this, you can’t get Section 230 protections, and if you’re a government bureaucrat and you’re engaged in this, you should be able to be sued individually by a citizen whose rights you’ve violated. I think that could change the culture of it, because right now, sadly I think a lot of these companies and folks in this town feel like they can do this without any kind of consequence, so we’ve got to change that dynamic. But I just think having an open and free dialogue and having more outlets and more information is good. That’s the idea.
Washington Reporter:
An interesting idea that Brendan Carr had when I interviewed him recently was for it to be required for government bureaucrats to put that out publicly in a reasonable timeframe any time they get a request from someone to censor something.
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
I like it.
Washington Reporter:
What should be done federally to keep Americans safe, and how does your time as Attorney General inform what you want to do in this new role?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
What we’ve seen, whether it’s at the local level or federal level, is that we have so-called leaders who create a culture where people aren’t held accountable. The 2020 summer riots is the best example of that. We’re still dealing with that, and I’ve even seen some Democrats walking away from that. Reimagining police and all this nonsense came out of that. In reality, crime has gone up. The statistics are alarming, usually in great cities. I’m from the St. Louis area; when I was AG, one of initiatives we worked on with the Trump administration was a Safe Streets Initiative, where we had lawyers in our office working with them to prosecute things like carjacking at capacity, a surge of prosecutions, but we have local prosecutors who are the only person in that jurisdiction who can actually prosecute homicides, and they don’t want to prosecute homicides or they have a seven-year backup of prosecuting homicides, it gives criminals license. Kim Gardner was an example of this in Missouri. Criminals would laugh at the idea of being sentenced because they knew they would be released the next day. Meanwhile, the McCloskey family was being prosecuted because they were outside defending their property. There was just such a double standard that cultivates mistrust and creates a culture where police aren’t respected at all, and I think that’s part of the reason why you see a dramatic decline in police officer recruitment, because the calculus now is ‘that’s not something I want to do.’ The woke ideology that Democrats have bought into has been devastating for public safety. By the way, it affects African-American communities the most in a lot of these cities/ When we look at places that vote on public safety taxes in cities, St. Louis for an example, saw the north side of St Louis vote overwhelmingly for more protection that their leaders who are competing in the Woke Olympics don’t seem to want to provide. From the position I’m in now, I have to demonstrate leadership and make sure these guys know they’re appreciated, like cops and firefighters. This is a local law enforcement issue, and the blame lies squarely with Democrats. This was Kamala Harris’s record as a DA, she was terrible. There was a surge in crime in San Francisco, no cash bail, reimagined policing, she tells people to contribute to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, ironically where Tim Walz is from, and there are multiple examples of people who were released from that, going out and committing murders. It’s just really irresponsible, so I think the most important thing we can do is speak out about it. Hopefully Democrats pay the price at the ballot box for these policies.
Washington Reporter:
You’re not in Rep. Cori Bush’s district, but do you feel like her loss in a Democratic Party primary was a watershed? Or is that a one-off?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
Wesley Bell ran against her, and I think her inflammatory remarks in support of Hamas caught up with her.
Washington Reporter:
So you think it was actually more foreign policy than anything else.
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
That was the impetus for her opponent, when she made those remarks. I think that was what got her in trouble with the Democratic Party, but I do think that the pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party is growing, looking at what’s happening in college campuses. By the way, Jewish students having to run for cover in libraries, it’s totally insane. But again, it shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise when you look at what we’ve been developing, you have critical race theory in grade schools, schoolkids and teachers being trained on what the oppression matrix look like. If your lens in every classroom is who’s the oppressor, who’s oppressed, it’s no wonder that when you get into a situation like this, what happened in Israel, that’s how some people are going to view it. It’s really toxic. And so we’re reaping now what the liberals have pushed for a generation or two now, when you see it play out on college campuses; getting back to the DEI thing, it doesn’t bring us together. The things that bring us together, are our belief in the fundamental principles of this country, that we’re all free and we all can achieve, everybody should be treated fairly, nobody should be discriminated against based on their race, but that’s exactly what they’re pushing. And so I think that stuff’s important to bring us together, but they’ve got a very divisive rhetoric that’s fueled by this identity politics.
Washington Reporter:
If you’re not in the Trump cabinet, you’ll be voting on all of these appointees. What do you hope to see from a Trump cabinet, Trump judges, and Trump priorities from a second Trump term?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
It’s just gonna be a very unique opportunity to get a reset on the past four years. But more than just that, making sure that whoever takes the job at Homeland Security is going to make sure we actually have a secure border. We need to reinstitute Remain in Mexico, it was working, finishing that wall to send the message to countries far and wide that you can’t just stream across here illegally. There have been millions of people coming here illegally, we don’t know who they are, we don’t know where they’re from, and that is a national security risk. We’d have agencies that weren’t focused on censorship and actually were executing an agenda that empowers working families, to have an energy policy that, again, it makes us dominant, exporting to friends and allies and makes things less expensive, to have somebody that’s working on budget proposals that are responsible. There’s going to be a ton of great opportunities, like a tax policy that works for real people. And I think, President Trump would come in, he’s got one term, his second term, to be a disruptor in many ways. I think we need that. I think we need someone to come in and push the status quo. So I see a tremendous opportunity. He’s got a lot of great options with people who can help execute that agenda.
Washington Reporter:
What would you say to the incoming Republican senators, whoever they end up being, that you wish you knew in January 2023?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
We have lunch together a lot.
Washington Reporter:
What’s your favorite Senate lunch?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
Missouri dominates in barbecue, so I think we sealed that category.
Washington Reporter:
The North Carolinians are conceding defeat on that?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
Second or third. Texas or Arkansas, then Oklahoma.
Washington Reporter:
That’s probably the most controversial thing you’ve said today. You might have Ted Cruz breaking down your door.
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
The Congressional Baseball Game is also a lot of fun. I didn’t know that much about it, but it’s been a great opportunity to get to know the House. It’s been fun getting to know people like Steve Scalise, August Pfluger, Greg Steube, there are some great guys over there, and I’ve found myself partnering with them on legislation, so I do like that aspect of the job. If you spend the time and you’re working hard, you’ll find a lot of people to work with. The flip side of that is that it’s important to not lose touch with your constituents. I fly back and forth every week. Staying in touch with the people of your state and what’s important to them is critical. I view it as a really critical part of my job to make sure that I am the senator from and for Missouri here.
Washington Reporter:
Do you see yourself signing up for the Congressional Hockey, Soccer, or Football Games?
Sen. Eric Schmitt:
Maybe football. Cruz has an informal basketball league too.