Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri, one
of the few true First Amendment warriors in Congress. Senator
Schmidt recently introduced the Censorship Accountability Act, among others, to
preserve Americans First rights and give citizens the ability to
hold the administrative state accountable. Very important. I can't think
of too many more important topics than this topic we're
about to address this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Thanks so much for being here, Senator, It's great to.
Speaker 2: Be with you, and you know what we all need
to Shirpa, including me, So I'm glad that you're providing
that service.
Speaker 1: Guidance is my north star is really what it is? Yeah? Absolutely, Well,
no rest for the weary. You know, we went through
a very fatiguing election cycle, and it's right back down
to business. But things change as you head to Washington,
d C. For this next session of Congress, of course,
and that is Republican control of the Senate. It's been
a while. Let's begin there first. What are the opportunities,
what are the challenges you face with you know, a
decent majority, but certainly not one that gets you passed cloture.
Speaker 2: Well, I think to take a step back and fully
recognize what happened in November. It truly was a historic
election in the sense that President Trump, who has really
remade the Republican Party in a party that I feel
very much at home with. I grew up in a
blue collar neighborhood sort of surrounded by blue dog union
kind of Democrats. And the truth of the matter is
that the Democrat Party now is sort of of by
and for the elites, and the Republican Party is the
party of working Americans. And I think that's a good thing.
It's broadened our base, it's broadened our appeal. You see
this sort of the you know, you've got this news
hour and the podcasts, and news is being more widely dispersed.
That's all good for us. I think that's all good
for us, and the challenge, of course, we can have
a party like that. We have some more lower propensity
voters and you got to make sure they go out
and vote. And boy did they show up in November
and gave President Trump a mandate. Swept all the battleground states,
won the popular vote. I'm not sure how many people
really saw that coming. I spent a lot of time
on the campaign trail with President Trump, including the last weekend,
and you could sort.
Speaker 3: Of feel it.
Speaker 2: And there's a trap of sort of the anecdotal evidence
about energy and all that, but it was real. I
mean everywhere, it was thirty thousand people in every arena.
So the excitement I think of that night of sweeping
the battleground states winning the popular vote has carried over
now into Washington. President Trump was on Capitol Hill this
week talking to us about that agenda. I think Republicans
in the House and the Senate are really committed to
delivering on you know, the campaign promises that President Trump made,
which was energy dominance, securing the border number one first
and foremost. I think you're going to see a lot
of executive orders on day one related to that, you know,
restoring America standing in the world. And then of course
you've got this issue of free speech that I you know,
I'm forty nine years old, so dumb, a gen x
and I'm old enough to remember in college. I mean,
I've always been a conservative, but we're liberals actually.
Speaker 3: Believed in this thing.
Speaker 2: Actually, you know, they believed in free speech, and we
can talk more about it. I think the last ten
years or so, you know, from twenty fourteen to twenty
twenty four is this era where they just were hell
bent on power and control. They crossed the Rubicon and
it wasn't about free exchange of ideas anymore. It was
about exercising power and control and limiting the opposition what
they could say and what they could hear. And that's
truly an anti American concept. So yeah, we're very excited
about the next Congress that started. Now there's a lot
of great opportunities again, I think, to deliver for the
American people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's a scary time. You and
I are of a certain age. We are gen xers.
I'm in that age range, just a couple few years
older than you, and I do remember at least a
vague sense that you could go to a college campus
in America and you know you could listen to right
of center voices as well. You could not do that.
You have not been able to do that in some
time in the vast majority of our college campuses. It's
a very very sad thing. But I saw this creeping
in all the way back in the early nineteen nineties
when I was, you know, a snot nosed freshman at
the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, so many many years ago.
And it's just been you know, a couple few generations
now where we've seen this building and building and building.
Then we get to a place in twenty twenty one,
the Biden administration that is an absolute nightmare. But more
than that, in its nightmarish fashion, it is nineteen eighty
four realized that's what we saw, and we're learning more
and more about this. But I think before we talk
about these key pieces of legislation, let's talk about how
we got here, because how we got here first and
foremost is the collusion between the federal government, the Biden administration,
and big tech in America, among some other things. But
that's the core area. And you and others stood up
and said, wait a minute, Houston, Saint Louis, if you will,
we have a problem here. You filed a lawsuit that
became well, a very important part of this conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So before I was in the US Senate, I was
the attorney general in Missouri and during a really interesting time,
you know, Joe Biden comes into office in twenty twenty one.
You know, we were we sort of prided ourselves or
a few of US states, we really challenged I think
this radical agenda you saw from the Biden administration, whether
it was on energy or you know.
Speaker 3: The whole host of issues.
Speaker 2: You know, Joe Biden sort of promised to be this
kind of moderate guy. But these folks, you know, who
were writing white papers about open borders, and they somehow
ended up in positions of power, and they you know,
rate tavoc on the country, and and you know, when
we were going through that, we had an amazing team.
In fact, my Solicitor General John Sower has been tapped
by President Trump to be the Solicitor General the United States.
So we had to assembled a really good team. We
were ready to roll, and we kept seeing you know,
it's interesting. We would watch, you'd see Jensaki at the
podium openly saying that this again in the context, this
is COVID forcing people to take the shot, forcing five
year olds to wear the mask, Hunter Biden laptop suppression
of that story. You got to put yourself back into
that mode of they were willing to use every lever
possible for power. And then Jensaki's there at the podium
as the spokesperson for the president saying, Yep, we're flagging
this post for Facebook can't say this. We're making them
aware that we see this. They need to do something
about it. I mean they were, they were open about this, yes,
And so you know this around the time you get
into this disinformation government's board. You know, in the United
you're talking about nineteen eighty four in the United States
of America, they're talking about a board deciding what information
was truthful or not truthful. The government, I mean, the
government has no business doing that. That's the reason we
have the First Amendment. And so we filed the lawsuit.
We saw enough. We filed the lawsuit in Missouri versus Biden.
And one key aspect of that lawsuit was before we
got an injunction to say you can't do this anymore.
We got the judge to agreed to allow us to
get discovery. So this was before the Twitter files, This
was before the congressional hearings. We got our hands on
the emails and the text messages, I mean reams and
reams of information of the Surgeon General of the United
States communicating directly with top ranking officials that metas saying
you got to take this down, and then to say, sure,
what else we can do the level of and there
were nonprofits involved. They were farming some of this out
to universities to flag things and work with social media companies.
So this vast censorship enterprise was real, and it was
it was held in on silencing Americans who didn't say
the right things and agree with the regime narrative. And
so I think that lawsuit was instrumental in exposing the
censorship that was happening in the United States of America.
And then of course Elon must buys Twitter. They have
the Twitter files, which is even sort of amplifies it
even more Jordan, and there, you know, they start bringing
people in and you really got a full view of
how scary this really was and where we were and
we just.
Speaker 3: Can never let that happen again.
Speaker 1: I don't think people fully understand how important your lawsuit was.
In discovery. Obviously, I think we're getting a much better
understanding over the last couple of years what Elon musk
purchase of Twitter now x has meant. But and you
were able to show what the Biden administration people and
the news speak people had scoffed at, Oh, these are
conspiracy theorists. Are these right wing conspiracy theorists, these maga people.
They don't they're lying to you. It's disinformation. It's misinformation.
It's malinformation. You talk about most speak, they're inventing terms
for this stuff to suppress speech. What was that battle
like for you, Well, when we filed the losses, it
was exactly that. You had all these people saying, oh, look,
another frivolous lawsuit based on a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 3: We had private.
Speaker 2: Plaintiffs involved who had been you know, censored themselves, and
the discovery I think shocked a lot of people. I was,
I mean, quite frankly, we knew there was something there,
but the level, in the depth, and the vast reach.
I mean, we're talking about agencies most people have never
heard of SISA. You know, you've got the CDC, all
these folks colluding with some of the biggest companies in
the history of the world to suppress the voices of Americans.
And so we were able to actually took the last
thing I did before I took the oath of office
as ag in Missouri. We took the deposition of Anthony Fauci.
We took the definition or the deposition of Elvis Chan.
Elvis Chan was the FBI Agent in charge of Northern
California who was for six months telling these social media
companies look out for this Russian hacken League operation, you know,
And in a sworn affter David, one of the members
of the social media group, said that he was referencing
specifically the Hunter Biden laptop. So they were pre bunking
this story ahead of the election, and they knew it
was his laptop. In November of twenty nineteen. They knew
it was Hunter Hunter Biden's laptop they had in their possession,
yet they were telling them that this was this was
fake news.
Speaker 3: And so in taking.
Speaker 2: Fauci's deposition, it was just really amazing.
Speaker 3: The depths.
Speaker 2: I think he said, I don't recall like one hundred
and eighty six times for a guy who he knew
everything it was the science. It's amazing how many things
he didn't know when he was under oath. Yes, but yes,
I think the level of it, and just sort of
the the links that they went to to tarnish the
reputations and deep platform people who just disagreed with them,
who by the who said things like, yeah, maybe we
shouldn't be shutting down schools over this, or maybe, you know,
maybe the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission, which all those things
turned out to be true. I mean, just having a
debate about these things was off limits, and I think
that's the really scary thing about it all.
Speaker 1: Well, just to pause there for a moment, do you
find it curious? I mean you in particular, among many,
but you in particular must have just thought it audacious.
The whole campaign strategy of Joe Biden and then ultimately
Kamala Harris talking about Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans trying
to stifle and kill democracy in America. How insane was that?
You want to talk about absolute projection? What was going
through your mind? Is this became the talking point of
not only of course, the Democrat campaign, but you know
they're the usual suspects in the accomplice media.
Speaker 3: Well it was.
Speaker 2: It was hard to watch I think most Americans. But
having seen the links that they went to to undermine
core tenants of our experiment, which is people should be
able to spreak, their speak, their mind and free expression
of ideas, their willingness to bulldoze all those constitution protections,
it was not lost on me.
Speaker 3: How hypocritical all that was.
Speaker 2: And in fact, I had the privilege of before President
Trump's first debate, we had a sort of a policy
session and one of the topics was was sort of
this because this was their opening and closing argument, right, yeah,
Kamala Harris was was you knowly with the White House,
and the backdrop or closing argument was saying Donald Trump
will will destroy the country as a threat to democracy.
Speaker 3: This was always their argument.
Speaker 2: It's what gave them license to engage in lawfare in
their minds because he was just this this threat, this
literal hitler.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's all insane. It's Trump arrangement syndrome was real.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: But the truth is, and I think the response always
was there is only one political party in this country,
who's trying to jail their political opponent for the rest
of their life, who has opened up our borders to
fifteen million people that they want to You don't have
to be a citizen to be counted in the census,
to have permanent power. You know, in the filibuster pack,
the court add states to the union and censor millions
of Americans.
Speaker 2: That's your Democrat party right now. And they were doing
all of it. I mean, this isn't like you had
to make this stuff up. They were willing to go
to those links to control and sort of have one
party minutes in this country. And thankfully the American people
still have in our DNA, I think.
Speaker 3: This view where they.
Speaker 2: Can they can see this stuff, and they still push
back against, you know, the attempt to concentrate power in
the way that the Democrats were trying to concentrate and
use this red herring of Trump was the threat of
democracy when they could see them dragging him into court,
you know, on these bogus lawfair efforts, and then once
you know, some of this stuff on the Twitter.
Speaker 3: Files on Missouri versus Biden was out there. It's scary stuff.
Speaker 2: So I think the American people got it right, and
often I don't think get enough credit for providing the
course correction that we so desperately needed this past November.
Speaker 4: Superman derives his power from the yellow Sun. The Watched
Out on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day
Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy
and how it affects your wallet. DC politicians get their
power by giving hand out. In nineteen thirteen, the tax
code was four hundred pages long. Today it's seventy five thousand.
This is how politicians derive their power. Whether it's happening
in DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 3: Be informed.
Speaker 4: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: No, I agree, and that's exactly what happened in November.
People saw the law fair, they saw the weaponization of
the Justice Department to the federal legal system in particular
as what it was for what it was, you know,
it was banana republic style stuff. And you know, as
we record this today, we have flares of that still
going on, despite now Republican controlled, despite the mandate that
the voters gave to President elect Trump and Senate and
the House. We have a kangaroo court judge who is
you know, being as vindictive as he possible blee can,
because that's what Democrat leftist lawfair is all about, and
making President elect Donald Trump appeer via video to sentence
him to nothing but other than to say, for the
headlines of the accomplish media, here is your convicted, sentenced
president elect. And guess what, folks, He's still a threat
to democracy. And that's what we have going into this administration.
And it's all based on what we've seen over the
last four years. Now. When this began it was Missouri v. Biden,
it became murthy the Missouri. Of course, as it moved
through you won at the district court level, at the
federal government, you won at the circuit court level. And
then it gets to the Supreme Court. Let's go to
that point because before this you have two courts in
the federal system saying yes, this is an egregious abuse
of power. First and foremost, you're likely to win this
lawsuit as you move forward, and then you get the
Supreme Court which comes back and you know, talks about
the technical stuff in standing and waters down this whole thing.
Where do things stand right now? And just take us
back to that moment, because you know, as we've talked about,
you launched this lawsuit several years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think.
Speaker 2: If you really the importance of the lawsuit was sort
of twofold. In my view, it was to expose it
and then to stop it. And so let's look at that.
So the Discovery Twitter files exposed it. It's all out there,
it's public, and you're really seeing a retreat. In fact,
we were in a I mean, well, I make sure
I can say what I can say here, but in
conversations with some of these folks who were involved in
this at the highest levels of government, they recognized that
they had been exposed and they backed away from some
of the tactics that they had been using before. And
so that was a good thing. You're seeing, and I'm
sure we can talk more about it. You're seeing the
social media companies, even now Metas all of a sudden
found religion on this.
Speaker 3: They've changed their entire platform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you think of what do you think
of that meta kulpa from Mark Zuckerberg. Now, well, ye
as it responds to it.
Speaker 2: I guess as a Missouri and a true Missouri and
from the show me state, see right, you're going to
show me before I fully buy into it. But it
is a positive development. I think it is at least
an acknowledgment if you take what he says at face value,
that they went astray. And I think part of that
again twenty sixteen, in what Permanent Washington really needed this
is this Trump came in as this disruptor and Permanent
Washington didn't really know what to do. These social media
companies felt like maybe they had something to.
Speaker 3: Do with it.
Speaker 2: The radical left really rallied to them and said, you
can never let this happen again. We see twenty twenty.
You've got the Zuckerbucks, You've got censorship. They were committed
to not letting Trump remain in office, and they had
the full force of a lot of these you know,
deep state actors and also the biggest companies in the
history world coordinating on that. And they got what they wanted.
They got a guy Joe Biden who did exactly what
the left wanted, and then the American people got to
see that in full view. And I think I hope
that some of the people who were even involved in that, and.
Speaker 3: These social media giants understand how dangerous that really was.
Speaker 2: And so I do think that that level of awareness
has been helpful and exposed it. And I think you're
seeing the behavior change. We'll see, we'll follow it, and
I'm going to be on it. We're sending a letter
to Mark Zuckerberg this week saying, hey, we heard what
you said. Now you're gonna have to show us right
and so we can talk about, you know, some of
the legislation. We've got a bill that would provide the
IG the authority to just sort of investigate agencies and
make sure they're not continuing to do this stuff as
sort of a.
Speaker 3: Check on this.
Speaker 2: But so you've got that, you've got the exposure in
preventing it from happening. The Supreme Court case, ultimately, Murphy
versus Missouri, was, as you mentioned, decided on a very
technical standing issue in the sense that they sent it
back saying you're going to have to show that you
really that the parties involved here have the standing to
bring it, principally Missouri and Louisiana. So I still think
it's ultimately a huge win in the first Amendment. I
think it's one of the most important First Amendment cases
in the history of the United States because of the
implications in what it exposed, and so ultimately, if your
goal is to get these folks to stop and expose it,
I think we were able to accomplish a lot of
that through litigation.
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think it is one of
the most important cases ever to go before the court system,
ultimately before the Supreme Court, one of the most important
First Amendment cases definitely in our lifetime. But you know,
it's always interesting to me because in the last session
and the last couple of years in this country, the
Supreme Court has had some interesting decisions related to standing,
and that always I always find the standing issue remarkable
because you can't tell me you didn't have victims of
these censorship crimes going on in Missouri and Louisiana. He
had him going on all over the country. And I
think that's what your bills are really all about. And
I want to talk about that now. Our guest today
is Senator Eric Schmid of Missouri, again one of the
few true First Amendment warriors in Congress. As we are
about to talk about, Senator Schmidt recently introduced the Censorship
Accountability Act and some others. That bill is designed to
preserve America Can's First Amendment rights and give citizens the
ability to hold the administrative state accountable. According to its author,
let's start there, because I think that's at the core
of what we've just been talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so for me, you know, this legislation was derived
principally from my experience as the attorney general that brought
Missouri versus Biden, in the sense that it shouldn't take
you know, it shouldn't be up to a one attorney
general or two attorneys general the country to be able
to bring this kind of action and expose it. I
think we empower an army of citizens to hold their
government accountable. And so what the bill would do, the
legislation would empower individuals to bring a private right of action.
They can have their own cause of action against an
individual bureaucrat if their First Amendment rights have been violated.
So I think there's the goal here is twofold. One
is to actually hold these bad actors accountable, and the
other is.
Speaker 3: To get it to stop. And I think part of
what needs to happen, and we.
Speaker 2: Can get into you know, the Trump nominees, Pam Bindy,
I know, well, former State A G in Florida, the
Justice Department. I think if you look at the one
consistent electrical cord here between you know, all the nominees
that President Trump has put forward as their reformers.
Speaker 3: They're going in these agencies.
Speaker 2: They're The election in many ways was less about R
and D and versus you know, and sort of the
disruptors versus the establishment, and the American people want this
and they want people who are going to provide reform
from the inside. So legislation like this is sort of
pushes the culture, in my view, in a different direction.
So when you've got a bureaucrat at SISA that's kind
of been charged with, you know, executing this censorship enterprise,
maybe that bureaucrat would say, you know what, I actually
don't want to be sued. I'm not going to do that,
you know what I mean, like to try to change
the incentive structure here, because right now, yeah, give them
pause and push back and empower them in some ways
to not just go along with what the political class
and these bureaucracies really want them to do. And so
that's part of it, and I think but again, I
think now that the President Trump is uh, you know,
picking these nominees, there's gonna be a visceral resistance from
some of these folks who've been burrowed in who just
don't buy into the same things you and I believe in,
and they just feel like President Trump's a threat to democracy.
Everything is on the table. There's nothing we can't do
to stop him. I mean that that that that sort
of TDS still exists, and it exists in these federal bureaucracies.
Even they don't really show up to work, they still
have jobs and do things. So yeah, so that bill
would essentially empower individuals to sue individual bureaucrats at their
First Amendment rights, and that would solve a standing issue.
But more, I think most importantly, it sort of democratizes
the remedies here that you know, Joe Q Public or
Jane Q Public if they were deplatform and there is
real collusion here with the government, that they can actually
have their own cause of action.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very important. And by the way, if you're scoring
along at home, it's hard to keep up with all
of these federal agencies, which tells you that the government
is too big when you know, and the name SISA
has come up quite a bit, but it is the
cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency SISA. How about that
for nineteen eighty four style bureau. Right, Yeah, it brings
you your disinformation check and all of those sorts of things.
You have other legislation as well to go along with
this you mentioned before, you know, getting the Inspector General involved.
Let's talk about the other two pieces of legislation in
this package.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So if you think of this just a sort
of a construct, there's two ways to get at this
censorship enterprise. One is on the government side and the
other is on the private business side. And so the
second piece of the government side is to have an
Inspector General actually be working for the people and checking
in and making sure these government agencies aren't involved in
flagging things for social media companies. So it's more offensive
again changing the culture here within the federal bureaucracies. To
make sure that doesn't happen, there'd have to be a
report and so if something is going on, we can
flag it soon and put an end to it. But
the other side of it, then is what do you
do about the social media companies that engaged in this,
and I think you have to sort of understand the
protections again that they're allowed to have under federal law.
Back in the mid to late nineteen nineties, when you
and I were in college, the Internet was sort of
brand new, right, and the idea was, we want this
to be an open library. We want there to be
a free exchange of ideas. And if you're going to
be a platform where people come and give their point
of view, you shouldn't be held liable for legal action
like well, for example, let's say ABC News was when
George Stephanopolis called, you know, President Trump what he called them,
and there's no factual basis for it. They can be
sued and they can be held liable. Right, So we're
going to treat these platforms differently in that they have
legal protections, they're immune from those sorts of lawsuits. But
here's what's changed now. You've got to pick right. You're
either going to be a publisher or you're going to
be a platform. And so for the social media companies
that sort of live and die with this section two
thirty protections, be an open platform, I'm fine with that,
but you can't be a publisher. You can't be editing
this stuff to sort of fit the political whim that
you want to you know, have or the point of
view you want to have.
Speaker 3: So if you're engaged.
Speaker 2: Basically, the other piece of legislation here is if you're
a social media company and you've engaged in this kind
of censorship with the government, you lose your Section two
thirty protections. You as a social media company can be
sued as well. So again it allows individual citizens the
ability to kind of take these on themselves and protect
their First Amendment rights, again changing the incentive structure for
the social media companies as well.
Speaker 1: It's you know, I look at this and I say,
makes absolute sense to me. There should be accountability in this.
And that's the one thing that we always see, you know,
we we see and it's good, as you say, we
see the discovery. We see the information that proves what
we've been thinking all along that there was collusion and
abuse going on and you know, an absolute assault on
the First Amendment. But then nobody has ever held accountable.
This would do just that, but you've you're going up,
of course against a big tech machine that has lots
and lots of money and lots and lots of clout
in your side of Congress, and how in the House.
How confident are you that you can break through that,
because I think we've already seen In fact, I'm curious,
do you think what we've seen out of Mark Zuckerberg
and Meta and Facebook, this Mia Kulpa and saying, you know,
we're going to fire these these horrible fact checkers. You
know we're working in a concert with them. Do you
think that that was basically a way to show lawmakers
like yourself, Hey, you know we're serious about reforms. We
don't need laws to change this.
Speaker 3: It's funny to say that. I do think there's part
of this.
Speaker 2: What's happening is sort of a pr play to prevent
because they understand now, look, Republicans are in charge. Republicans
were on the wrong end of all this. You know,
I look at it as a true First Amendment believer,
I at least favor anybody. Republicans and Conservatives are not
afraid of the free and open debate. I never have been,
and I think when when it's exposed, that's why we win.
It's what, by the way, why the legacy media is
so threatened now too.
Speaker 3: They saw this.
Speaker 2: Sort of the rise of the podcaster and all these
different and they don't like it because they like being
the middleman, right, they like being the ones that sort
of gatekeepers of the information and to tailor it how
they want to for their own political agenda. And you
know this used to exist. I mean, we kind of
always knew the you know, the big news agencies in
NBC nightly News were biased. But it's like at a
whole other level now. I mean, it's off the hook
and it's crazy now, and and I think people see it,
they know they see it. The ratings are down, but yes,
I do think there's some of the idea to sort
of diffuse some of the momentum behind these these protect
the First Amendment kind of initiatives. But but I'm hopeful,
I really am. I think I think we're winning this fight.
Speaker 3: Now. I wouldn't have said.
Speaker 2: That a few years ago, but I think we've made
the case literally and figuratively, and the American people have
rejected I think the censorship.
Speaker 3: They don't want to see it.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's certainly a segment, particularly on the left,
that's totally fine with it as long as they're winning.
But I think at the core of again the American
experiment here is that people believe that you should be
able to speak your mind freely and the government shouldn't
be able to sort of snap back on that or
prevent you from doing it. And so all these bills,
the consistent theme there is, you know, I don't I
don't have a I mean, I have a worldview, but
but this is about people, Americans being able to speak
their minds freely.
Speaker 3: And when the government or social media companies engage in
the level of censorship that we saw in Missouri versus Biden,
there ought to be ramifications and there ought to be accountability.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting to me. You know, I keep hearing
this notion the past is prologue from the left right.
I mean, you have the the Algonquin round table over
at the View and Sonny host and you know, talking
about how equating what happened on January sixth, twenty twenty
one at the Capitol with World War II and the Holocaust.
I mean, this is the sort of stuff. But you know,
she's right about past is prologue. But what they don't
understand is that they are the prologue now. And you know,
they used to talk about, you know, fifty sixty years
ago the right suppressing speech in this country, and you
know how difficult that situation was, how abusive that was,
Yet they don't see it in themselves. And I think,
as you said before, the saving grace here has been
the American people and their fundamental beliefs in the fundamental
ideals of this country. Well, I think I think President
Trump brought a lot of these issues to the forefront
in a way that without him.
Speaker 3: In twenty sixteen and twenty twenty and twenty twenty four,
we wouldn't be at where we're at.
Speaker 2: And I think he's given Republicans again the ability to
fight back in a way that I don't think Republicans
did before.
Speaker 3: And I think that's that's a good thing. The other
thing I would say is power.
Speaker 2: People often say power corrupts, Power reveals and COVID to
me when we really look back on it, and it's
enough in the rear view mirror now where you start
to have a real analysis. It gave power, an enormous
amount of power to people who never should have had
it in the first place, and you saw the true
excesses of that power and of government actors who loved
every Monday morning, from you know Fauci to the county
executive in Saint Louis County, or by the way, a
school administrator who got to tell everyone, I'm going to
keep you saying, and we're going to have to.
Speaker 3: Take away some of your liberties. But trust me, trust
the science. And people saw through it. And as terrible
as COVID was, I think, you know, you look at
the loss of learning, the emotional you know, the psychological
issues for kids. Uh, it's devastating.
Speaker 2: It's devastating, and you know, I think you know, we
move on past it enough. They were they were putting
police tape around playgrounds, they were boarding up basketball hoops.
They were saying you couldn't visit your loved ones when
they were dying. I mean, these people were COVID tyrants, yes,
And so at my time as ag it was it
was clarifying. So you know, this Missouri versus Biden piece
was one of it. I sued sixty five school districts
for their mass mandates. We had the Missouri brought the
vaccine mandate lawsuits to the Supreme Court. It to me,
I guess I'm a bit of a contrarian anyway. But
I seeing this unfold, I just idn't believe that this
is America.
Speaker 3: This is not what America is about.
Speaker 2: And I think it wasn't just met a lot of
people who stood up and said, we're not doing that,
We're not going to do it, and we're going to
fight back. And I think now we're on the other
side of it. And you could say, even on the wokeness,
the nonsense DEI, all this stuff that they just hammered
over and over, American people weren't buying it, you know.
So that's why I'm really optimistic about the next four years.
We're kind of on the other side of this a
little bit. We've got momentum. The American people are with us.
They saw through the lefts there real moves that they
made in the last four years, and they rejected it.
And so I think sky's a limit we got. Our
party now is again at broad base. People who want
to just live their lives and they want to be prosperous,
and they want to speak their minds, and they just
tired to the government and people in these positions, these
elitists telling them how to live their lives. And if
I think we stay that as our north star. Mister
Sherpa will be okay.
Speaker 1: It just feels like such a bad dream, a fever
dream that we woke up from in this country, all
the things that you said, I mean, we lived as Americans.
I lived at My aunt was dying of cancer at
the beginning of the pandemic, and they would not allow us,
her husband of sixty years, to be in the room
with her. They were closing down churches for the love
of God. Literally, I mean, it's just amazing. So I'll
conclude with this as a guy of a certain age
like yours, truly, did you when you were playing your
Atari twenty six hundred back in the day, when you
were watching war games with Matthew Broderick and wondering about
global thermal nuclear war, did you ever foresee that you
would be a the Attorney General of the show me State,
ultimately the Senator of the show me State, engaged on
the front line of this great tech censorship battle.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be center fielder for the Saintless Cardinals,
so that I know, I wanted.
Speaker 1: I knew it.
Speaker 2: So No, And you know, interestingly, I grew up in
a in a really kind of working class neighborhood, as
I mentioned, and my dad works seven days a week
in the midnight shift. I didn't even know any lawyers
growing up. I just didn't. I'm trying to think when
the first time I had to have been in college,
maybe that I ever encountered, you know, or you know,
talk really to a lawyer. So but to me at
a relatively young age, I suppose around that time, the
law to me provided structure, Like I always cared about
America and you know, sort of a kind of a
son of the Reagan Revolution, right, And then I'm in
college the Republicans in ninety four take over, so it
did sort of spark an interest.
Speaker 3: But running for office is a whole other thing.
Speaker 2: I didn't get into that until my son was diagnosed
with a rare medical condition and I felt like I
was educated by the Jesuits, and so there's sort of
this service aspect of being a man for others sort
of collided with my love of the country, and I
thought I could make a difference, so I ran for office.
Speaker 3: But no that the kid grown up.
Speaker 2: In Bridgeton, Missouri, playing as atari wasn't contemplating taking on
the biggest companies in the federal government over the First Amendment.
But God is great, right, So I feel very fortunate,
honestly to be in this position, and it's the honor
of a lifetime to represent my state in Washington and
fight for the things that I know my fellow Missourians
believe in.
Speaker 1: Well, the Lord, I always believe puts us where he
needs us to be, whether we understand that or not
at the time, And certainly the Lord said you'd make
a pretty good attorney political leader. But as far as
a five tool center fielder, that just ain't happen.
Speaker 2: Well, really, yeah, I couldn't hit a major league slider.
Speaker 3: So that was that was the end of it.
Speaker 1: So buddy, you and me both, well, it's been an
absolute pleasure. I do wish you success because I wish
this country that I love success, and to do that,
we're going to need a what you've been able to accomplish,
a full disclosure of the abuses against the First Amendment,
the Constitution the American people, and now we're going to
need to do something about it and hold some people accountable.
So I very much appreciate your time today and your
efforts in the Senate.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. We'll do it again sometime. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That sounds great. Thanks to my guest today, Senator Eric
Schmid of Missouri, you've been listening to another edition of
The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kettle's senior elections correspondent
at The Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then,
stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the frame pol