Gaines for Girls with Riley Gaines - September 03, 2025


Weaponizing the DOJ？ Sen. Eric Schmitt Exposes Biden’s Lawfare


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

194.26288

Word count

3,517

Sentence count

245

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Sen. Claire McCaskill (R-Missouri) joins Betsy and Amanda to discuss the weaponization of the DOJ by former Attorney General Patrick Leahy and the impact of the Supreme Court Justice Department's handling of the Garland v. Biden case.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.880 This episode is brought to you by Defender.
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00:00:24.980 Hello, everybody.
00:00:26.260 Welcome back to the Gains for Girls podcast.
00:00:29.420 Very, very excited.
00:00:30.900 There's lots to talk about today.
00:00:32.580 We are going to be talking about the lawfare that we saw under President Biden with a very,
00:00:38.140 very qualified guest.
00:00:39.840 Today we're talking to, as I mentioned, we're talking about the weaponization of the DOJ.
00:00:46.820 We're talking with Senator Schmidt.
00:00:48.720 Of course, he's a senator, a U.S. senator from the state of Missouri.
00:00:53.080 It's his first term in the U.S. Senate.
00:00:55.060 Of course, he is a part of the Republican Party.
00:00:59.280 He has really been one of the leading Republicans, especially on these issues that apply to the
00:01:06.360 weaponization of the Garland Biden DOJ.
00:01:08.740 We're now seeing some turnaround.
00:01:11.620 We're seeing some wins in the courtroom setting, but it's not to stop these rogue activist judges.
00:01:16.980 He is especially qualified, given the fact that he was the attorney general of Missouri.
00:01:23.460 And he has a new book out called The Last Line of Defense, How to Beat the Left in Court.
00:01:29.380 You can check it out at Amazon.
00:01:30.740 It was a New York Times bestseller.
00:01:32.700 I can't tell you how hard that is to do as a conservative with a book coming from the conservative light.
00:01:40.620 So again, Last Line of Defense, check it out on Amazon.com, anywhere where you get your books and listen to this interview here.
00:01:48.580 Well, Senator, thank you for joining the Gains for Girls podcast.
00:01:52.580 Look, I am so excited to be able to talk with you about your new book, The Last Line of Defense, How to Beat the Left in Court.
00:01:58.600 But we need to start by talking about the most important news of the past week, at least to the Swifties across the globe.
00:02:07.100 Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are engaged, obviously being the senator of the great state of Missouri.
00:02:13.320 Of course, this is where the Kansas City Chiefs are.
00:02:15.640 What are your thoughts here?
00:02:17.120 I mean, I wish you could say I mean, you couldn't necessarily predict it, but it looked like they were marching down this path.
00:02:23.060 Right. And so it's official now.
00:02:24.940 And, yeah, Chiefs games, it's like a, you know, when she's at the game, it's just like a whole nother energy.
00:02:31.200 And for my daughters, I've got a 17 year old daughter and a daughter just turned 15, especially my 15 year old.
00:02:37.200 It got her watching a few a few more games the last couple of years.
00:02:40.820 So that was kind of fun. So, yeah, no doubt about that.
00:02:44.980 Admittedly, I am not a Swifty, but I will say it is kind of cool coming from a football family myself
00:02:51.420 to see the different audience or demographic that Taylor Swift has brought to football.
00:02:57.200 And I think it's a good day anytime when you have this woman who has a history of being pretty liberal in her views,
00:03:03.960 whatever it is, to now be engaged to on the path to marriage to a masculine man.
00:03:09.120 I'm excited about that.
00:03:10.040 That's right.
00:03:10.860 So anyways, of course, I've been following you, everything that you've done since your time in the U.S. Senate.
00:03:17.880 And even before that, actually, before we get into your book, there's one thing I wanted you to kind of walk us through.
00:03:24.260 This has been something that I have now in the position that I am really had to understand what's going on
00:03:30.120 with the recent news surrounding these different redistricting battles that are happening around the country.
00:03:35.980 Have Democrats not gerrymandered for decades now?
00:03:40.320 They have. In fact, I think Republicans are starting to wake up and fight back.
00:03:44.340 And we can talk about the book, but really kind of the ethos of the book, Last Line of Defense,
00:03:49.040 How We Beat the Left in Court, is I think Republicans have to understand that there's sort of the left has been operating on it
00:03:56.460 in a different mode than we have for a long time.
00:03:59.180 And I think conservatives need to wake up and fight back in those arenas.
00:04:03.800 And one of those is on the congressional redistricting maps.
00:04:07.020 The reason why this is a win for Republicans if we choose to fight here is that we have way more to gain
00:04:13.080 if you look at the red states that could redistrict and pick up more seats in Congress
00:04:17.440 because the Democrats have already done all this.
00:04:19.720 That's why they're kind of realizing now, like take Illinois to Missouri's east.
00:04:23.900 You can't gerrymander a state more than Illinois has gerrymandered their state.
00:04:28.620 So it's kind of interesting when the Texas Democrats were fleeing somewhere.
00:04:32.140 They fled to Illinois to protest, but of course that state is perhaps the worst example.
00:04:38.160 So, yeah, I think we need to do it.
00:04:39.880 Missouri, I think, is about ready to move forward on that to pick up an additional seat.
00:04:43.740 I think Indiana is talking about it.
00:04:45.280 Texas already did it. 1.00
00:04:46.140 Florida could be in the mix.
00:04:47.760 So if you look at, think of like the SEC states,
00:04:51.160 if they decide that they're going to engage in this game that the Democrats started a long time ago,
00:04:56.460 Republicans have a lot to gain.
00:04:58.180 That's right.
00:04:58.760 But, yeah, it's been interesting for me, again, I think relatively new to the political sphere
00:05:04.720 and understanding it in the depth that I do now,
00:05:07.560 to see where you have states like California or Massachusetts,
00:05:10.160 which have like a, what, 30, anywhere from 30, 45 percent Republican base in the state,
00:05:17.980 yet, I mean, hardly any representation in Congress.
00:05:20.860 Yeah, in many instances, really, none.
00:05:23.160 Like there are some states that have 40 plus percent Republicans and they have zero Republican representation in Congress.
00:05:30.520 And I'm not just talking about the, you know, some states just have one congressman, right?
00:05:34.440 I'm not talking about those states.
00:05:35.480 I'm talking about other states.
00:05:36.340 So Democrats have gotten as much juice out of this as they can.
00:05:40.360 I don't think they can squeeze any more.
00:05:41.840 They might be able to find one here or there.
00:05:43.540 But California is going to try to upend their commission, which they, you know, kind of created to rig the system a little bit to the left years ago.
00:05:52.620 Now that's not good enough.
00:05:54.360 But if they want to kind of engage in this fight, if Republicans are willing to fight back, we have a lot more to gain.
00:05:59.480 And by the way, the other thing that's worth noting, right now we still count, or in the last census at least, count illegal immigrants in the census.
00:06:07.980 Because you don't have to be right now a citizen to be counted in the census.
00:06:11.840 That ought to change, too.
00:06:13.200 And that could change.
00:06:14.040 If we play that game, which we could under the law, California would lose a dozen seats. 0.76
00:06:19.580 So there's a lot on the line.
00:06:21.300 Man, it's crazy.
00:06:22.540 And I think all of this, again, has really come to light, especially since President Trump has been back in the Oval Office.
00:06:30.320 But as we've alluded to, of course, you have a new book out, again, titled The Last Line of Defense, How to Beat the Left in Court.
00:06:36.280 We saw the scope of, I mean, judicial weaponization of the Biden and Garland DOJ.
00:06:43.920 Tell us a little bit about your book and what inspired you to write it.
00:06:48.080 Yeah, so people can check it out right now on Amazon.
00:06:50.420 Last Line of Defense, How to Beat the Left in Court.
00:06:53.100 It just was named in the New York Times bestseller list, which for a conservative book is a pretty big deal.
00:06:57.640 So I think that is, yeah, we're proud of that.
00:07:00.000 But really, it's kind of a field manual for what it was like when I was Attorney General of Missouri to be on the front lines against the left-wing lawfare machine, right?
00:07:09.820 So basically, my first, you know, before I became a senator, I was AG in Missouri.
00:07:14.080 The first couple of years we spent our time taking on violent crime, prosecuting the bad guys, that kind of stuff.
00:07:19.220 When Biden came in, though, everything sort of changed, right?
00:07:21.960 You had, this was a time of, you know, you still had lockdowns, you had mask mandates, and you had vaccine mandates, you had censorship, you had ESG, you had DEI struggle sessions.
00:07:32.300 I mean, the left was coming.
00:07:34.060 And so we stood up in the arena.
00:07:35.540 We fought back.
00:07:36.160 We took the student loan debt forgiveness case all the way to the Supreme Court.
00:07:38.740 We won.
00:07:39.440 We took the vaccine mandate that was Missouri, took that to the Supreme Court.
00:07:42.940 We won.
00:07:43.260 We filed the Missouri versus Biden lawsuit that exposed this vast censorship enterprise that the Biden administration started on day three.
00:07:50.400 We took Fauci's deposition.
00:07:52.840 We took Elvis Chan's deposition, who was the FBI agent pre-bunking the Hunter Biden laptop story.
00:07:57.420 So there's a lot of great stories in here that I think your audience will find interesting, especially even on the local level.
00:08:04.800 When you had, you know, forcing five-year-olds to wear masks all day long, even though there was no evidence to support any of this stuff, these adults should have known better.
00:08:13.120 We stood up.
00:08:13.680 We sued 50-plus school districts in Missouri.
00:08:16.200 We fought back and we won.
00:08:17.060 So really, the lesson here is if conservatives have the courage to fight back, like you did, right, if we do it, we can win.
00:08:25.940 And not just in court, but in the court of public opinion.
00:08:28.600 I think there's a reason why we're winning a lot of these cultural fights now.
00:08:31.840 Democrats are on the wrong side of these 80-20 issues all the time.
00:08:35.360 Think of crime.
00:08:36.520 Think of men playing in women's sports.
00:08:39.260 Think of illegal immigration.
00:08:40.220 But if we just stand back and let them kind of run roughshod, we'll lose.
00:08:44.920 But if we stand up and fight back, we win.
00:08:47.060 That's it.
00:08:48.640 Missouri really has been fantastic.
00:08:51.400 Of course, your time as attorney general, even your successor, Andrew Bailey.
00:08:55.940 I mean, I feel like for when Biden was serving as president, like there was like a new lawsuit.
00:09:00.480 I felt like every day coming from Missouri.
00:09:03.420 I know big wins surrounding, I believe it was Pornhub, of course, China, different involvement there.
00:09:09.780 Yeah, we sued communist China when I was into, we sued communist China for unleashing the COVID pandemic on the world. 0.99
00:09:16.220 We have a $24 billion judgment.
00:09:18.140 We talk about that in the book.
00:09:19.260 What was that like?
00:09:19.980 And really, in fact, in the Fauci deposition, there's a lot of nuggets to pull, but he was fascinated by China's lockdown strategy.
00:09:30.360 He wanted to emulate it and undermine President Trump.
00:09:33.260 Of course, you know, he secretly was funding through the EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan lab there in China.
00:09:39.160 So there's a lot of stuff that I think the real risk, Riley, is that, you know, we're on the other side of the fever dream right now.
00:09:45.960 And all these great wins and successes we're having with President Trump, that's very important.
00:09:49.920 And thank God for all that.
00:09:51.280 But we shouldn't lose sight of how close we came to losing it all and really what they were willing to do when they had that kind of power during COVID or all this other nonsense.
00:10:01.000 Yeah, it's amazing to look back.
00:10:02.960 I was a college student during the time of COVID and to now, again, what we're in 2025.
00:10:09.680 So three, four years post-COVID, to look back and really see how so many strong-minded people, or at least people who would call themselves strong-minded, really fell victim to the tactics that were implemented at the institutional level, of course, within our federal government during COVID.
00:10:29.640 So praise God for you guys shedding light on this and really, again, being on the front lines of pushing back.
00:10:36.180 Do you think now conservatives, obviously Trump is very different than any other Republican president, at least in modern history, do you think that conservatives have learned to use the courts as aggressively as the left has, again, for decades?
00:10:52.040 Or are more lawsuits even the answer we should be seeking?
00:10:54.960 What's kind of the solution here?
00:10:57.120 Yeah, I think Republicans played nice for too long on this stuff and just sort of, and kind of ceded way too much territory, and the courts are included.
00:11:05.780 And that's really one of the reasons why I wrote the book, Last Line of Defense, How to Beat the Left in Court, you can get right now online.
00:11:13.100 But I think we're learning.
00:11:15.540 I think this is a playbook because this won't be the last time, really.
00:11:19.220 It just won't be.
00:11:20.640 We like to think we'll be in this kind of situation forever.
00:11:24.400 That's historically not how it happens.
00:11:26.660 I think the left also manufactures or uses, quote-unquote, emergencies to gather power in ways that were sort of unimaginable.
00:11:34.280 I like to say that I don't think power necessarily corrupts, but I do think it reveals, and it revealed a lot about what people, even like the local bureaucrat public health official, you know, or the superintendent that was pushing this radical ideology because they were, you know, these struggle sessions.
00:11:51.540 I mean, we uncovered, we opened up a parent portal.
00:11:53.560 A lot of this involves kids and parents, and to this day, and I live in the St. Louis area, when I go to the grocery store, you know, it's mostly moms will come up to me and say thanks for fighting for our kids.
00:12:04.040 I actually had an intern in Washington come up and say, you sued my school over masks, and I was like, I don't know where this is going.
00:12:10.560 And she's like, thank you.
00:12:11.660 Oh, my God, it was totally crazy.
00:12:12.900 So I think that what they were willing to do, we opened up a parent portal where people were, you know, sending in messages of what was happening.
00:12:20.160 Kids who didn't want to wear masks were forced to eat lunch by themselves on a stage in the middle of gym.
00:12:25.560 Kids were being forced to, this is in Missouri now, right?
00:12:27.940 Like, this wasn't like in New York City.
00:12:30.060 Kids being forced to engage in what were called privilege walks where, like, okay, if you're white, take a step forward.
00:12:36.160 If your parents are married, take a step forward.
00:12:38.100 If they have a job, take a step forward.
00:12:39.720 And then open your eyes.
00:12:41.080 And then, of course, the room is totally divided.
00:12:44.180 Kids are, you know, played off of one another.
00:12:46.660 I mean, it's just sick what was going on.
00:12:48.800 And so I think there's still a tendency to the left.
00:12:51.340 They want to do it.
00:12:52.420 They're in retreat.
00:12:53.840 We got to make sure they don't just rename these things.
00:12:56.780 But I think these big cultural fights are often played out in courtrooms.
00:13:00.820 And we just have to engage.
00:13:02.140 But the book's not really written for lawyers, although I hope lawyers read it.
00:13:05.240 But it's really for, like, a normal audience who's like, what was it like to take Fauci's deposition?
00:13:11.540 Or what was the craziest thing that you saw in some of these fights?
00:13:14.620 And that's really what the book is about.
00:13:16.580 It's interesting you say that it's moms oftentimes who are approaching you.
00:13:21.960 And, again, I think it shows you the war on children specifically.
00:13:25.260 We've seen lots of wins, certainly over the past few months, around the Supreme Court, whether it's religious freedom, whether it's free speech, whether it's parental rights.
00:13:35.020 I know the Supreme Court, hopefully this fall, will hear oral arguments surrounding a Title IX case.
00:13:40.040 So hopefully the wins keep coming.
00:13:42.640 Last thing for you, what are some other legislative priorities for you all in the Senate upon y'all's soon return?
00:13:49.720 Well, I handled the rescissions package before we left, and I think that was a big statement to say, you know what, we're going to claw back money that should have never gone to USAID for Guatemalan sex changes and DEI in Burma and Sesame Street in Iraq.
00:14:02.060 All this crazy stuff that people are like, what's going on over there?
00:14:04.400 I remember going to the gallery at the Joint Address to Congress when President Trump was mentioning all of the crazy things that our taxpayer dollars were going to and the silence in the room from people who, again, even people, a part of these legislative bodies who had no idea this is where it was going.
00:14:23.900 Right. Well, what happens is, unfortunately, money is appropriated, and there's not a line item for that stuff.
00:14:29.800 But then you get these crazy bureaucrats and agencies like USAID, that's where they go spend it on. 0.66
00:14:34.720 It's nuts.
00:14:35.420 So we've got to get better control of that.
00:14:36.720 I think we'll see more of those, hopefully.
00:14:38.680 We've got, you know, the largest tax cut in American history we got done before we left.
00:14:42.380 I think when we get back, it'll be, you know, sort of appropriations bills.
00:14:46.320 We'll do defense authorization.
00:14:47.680 But we're going to try to continue to get more President Trump's nominees put forth and approved in the Senate.
00:14:55.780 The Democrats are engaged in just record level, unprecedented obstruction.
00:15:00.120 I mean, they're stuck right now, Riley.
00:15:01.540 They don't have a message.
00:15:02.960 They don't have a messenger.
00:15:04.340 Their party's still captured by the radical left.
00:15:06.560 They're on the wrong side of these 80-20 issues.
00:15:09.020 It's just, and all they can do is compete to be the chief resister to President Trump.
00:15:13.780 But the truth is, President Trump won the popular vote.
00:15:16.520 He won those battleground states because he's talking about common sense issues.
00:15:19.780 So when, you know, you go, when he does what he does in Washington, D.C.
00:15:23.440 and you see crime drop dramatically, people support that.
00:15:26.380 You know, when he's sealed the border and he's engaged in deportations, people support that.
00:15:30.240 So what do the Democrats do?
00:15:31.580 They object to Trump.
00:15:32.720 They go down to El Salvador and have margaritas with a, you know, a MS-13 gang member who beats his wife.
00:15:38.900 I mean, they are in a weird, rough spot.
00:15:41.260 I don't think they've hit rock bottom yet.
00:15:42.600 So I think we've got to be pedal to the metal and continue to be aggressive.
00:15:45.520 And again, one of the reasons I wrote the book, Last Line of Defense, is because I just think we have to have courage and understand that what people want more than anything is authentic leadership.
00:15:55.140 And we need to keep going.
00:15:57.560 That's it.
00:15:58.340 Yeah, it's a good point.
00:15:59.120 You know, these Democrats, they think they're opposing Trump, but really what they're doing is opposing the American people.
00:16:05.680 One more time, where can people get your book, The Last Line of Defense?
00:16:09.380 Yeah, they can go to Amazon right now.
00:16:10.900 Anywhere books are sold, Barnes & Noble, it's everywhere.
00:16:14.560 But Amazon, for most people, is just the easiest way to do it.
00:16:17.240 But wherever you buy books online or actually in stores, you can get the book.
00:16:20.820 I think people enjoy it.
00:16:22.100 It's written in a way that I think kind of looks back at those big wins, but also gives a playbook moving forward of how conservatives can fight and win.
00:16:29.220 Fantastic. Well, that's what we need.
00:16:31.780 So we appreciate you.
00:16:32.740 Thank you for everything.
00:16:34.140 Good luck as you guys, again, make your return pretty soon and continue to accomplish the America First agenda.
00:16:40.940 Very appreciative of you.
00:16:42.080 Thanks. Hope to see you soon.
00:16:43.240 Thank you guys for tuning in to the Gains for Girls podcast.
00:16:48.300 Again, make sure you follow us on youtube.com slash outkick.
00:16:52.440 That's where you can like, comment, subscribe.
00:16:54.840 Never miss an episode.
00:16:56.200 Share these episodes far and wide.
00:16:58.100 It helps tremendously when you do.
00:16:59.940 And I want you guys to go to amazon.com or anywhere where you get your books and check out the last line of defense, how to beat the left in court by Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri.
00:17:11.820 Fantastic.
00:17:12.580 The legislative wins that we have seen, as you heard him say, it's to speak to how we got to the place that we did, especially under the Biden administration.
00:17:21.300 But also it's a playbook for what to expect in the future and how we as conservatives, really not even to make this partisan, how we as people with common sense, especially on the cultural issues, can continue to see the wins that we have seen over the past eight, nine months at this point.
00:17:38.580 Appreciate you guys.
00:17:39.580 And we will see you again next week.
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