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.
00:05:36.340So Democrats have gotten as much juice out of this as they can.
00:05:40.360I don't think they can squeeze any more.
00:05:41.840They might be able to find one here or there.
00:05:43.540But 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.
00:05:54.360But if they want to kind of engage in this fight, if Republicans are willing to fight back, we have a lot more to gain.
00:05:59.480And 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.
00:06:07.980Because you don't have to be right now a citizen to be counted in the census.
00:06:22.540And I think all of this, again, has really come to light, especially since President Trump has been back in the Oval Office.
00:06:30.320But 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.
00:06:36.280We saw the scope of, I mean, judicial weaponization of the Biden and Garland DOJ.
00:06:43.920Tell us a little bit about your book and what inspired you to write it.
00:06:48.080Yeah, so people can check it out right now on Amazon.
00:06:50.420Last Line of Defense, How to Beat the Left in Court.
00:06:53.100It just was named in the New York Times bestseller list, which for a conservative book is a pretty big deal.
00:06:57.640So I think that is, yeah, we're proud of that.
00:07:00.000But 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?
00:07:09.820So basically, my first, you know, before I became a senator, I was AG in Missouri.
00:07:14.080The first couple of years we spent our time taking on violent crime, prosecuting the bad guys, that kind of stuff.
00:07:19.220When Biden came in, though, everything sort of changed, right?
00:07:21.960You 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.
00:07:43.260We filed the Missouri versus Biden lawsuit that exposed this vast censorship enterprise that the Biden administration started on day three.
00:07:52.840We took Elvis Chan's deposition, who was the FBI agent pre-bunking the Hunter Biden laptop story.
00:07:57.420So there's a lot of great stories in here that I think your audience will find interesting, especially even on the local level.
00:08:04.800When 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.
00:09:51.280But 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.
00:10:02.960I was a college student during the time of COVID and to now, again, what we're in 2025.
00:10:09.680So 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.
00:10:29.640So praise God for you guys shedding light on this and really, again, being on the front lines of pushing back.
00:10:36.180Do 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?
00:10:52.040Or are more lawsuits even the answer we should be seeking?
00:10:57.120Yeah, 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.
00:11:05.780And 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.
00:11:20.640We like to think we'll be in this kind of situation forever.
00:11:24.400That's historically not how it happens.
00:11:26.660I think the left also manufactures or uses, quote-unquote, emergencies to gather power in ways that were sort of unimaginable.
00:11:34.280I 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.
00:11:51.540I mean, we uncovered, we opened up a parent portal.
00:11:53.560A 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.
00:12:04.040I 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.
00:12:12.900So 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.
00:12:20.160Kids who didn't want to wear masks were forced to eat lunch by themselves on a stage in the middle of gym.
00:12:25.560Kids were being forced to, this is in Missouri now, right?
00:12:27.940Like, this wasn't like in New York City.
00:12:30.060Kids being forced to engage in what were called privilege walks where, like, okay, if you're white, take a step forward.
00:12:36.160If your parents are married, take a step forward.
00:12:38.100If they have a job, take a step forward.
00:13:02.140But the book's not really written for lawyers, although I hope lawyers read it.
00:13:05.240But it's really for, like, a normal audience who's like, what was it like to take Fauci's deposition?
00:13:11.540Or what was the craziest thing that you saw in some of these fights?
00:13:14.620And that's really what the book is about.
00:13:16.580It's interesting you say that it's moms oftentimes who are approaching you.
00:13:21.960And, again, I think it shows you the war on children specifically.
00:13:25.260We'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.
00:13:35.020I know the Supreme Court, hopefully this fall, will hear oral arguments surrounding a Title IX case.
00:13:42.640Last thing for you, what are some other legislative priorities for you all in the Senate upon y'all's soon return?
00:13:49.720Well, 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.
00:14:02.060All this crazy stuff that people are like, what's going on over there?
00:14:04.400I 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.
00:14:23.900Right. Well, what happens is, unfortunately, money is appropriated, and there's not a line item for that stuff.
00:14:29.800But then you get these crazy bureaucrats and agencies like USAID, that's where they go spend it on.
00:15:32.720They go down to El Salvador and have margaritas with a, you know, a MS-13 gang member who beats his wife.
00:15:38.900I mean, they are in a weird, rough spot.
00:15:41.260I don't think they've hit rock bottom yet.
00:15:42.600So I think we've got to be pedal to the metal and continue to be aggressive.
00:15:45.520And 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.
00:16:22.100It'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.
00:16:59.940And 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.
00:17:12.580The 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.
00:17:21.300But 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.