A (2:51)

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B (2:53)

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A (2:58)

So you can lose more sweat and raise your game. Gatorade, is it in you?

B (3:18)

Senator, how are you, sir? Hey, Glenn.

A (3:21)

Good. How are you doing?

B (3:22)

Great. It's good to talk to you. As always. I'm excited to talk to you about your book because it is, you're taking us into the inside of what you've already seen and, and then kind of laying the groundwork for what needs to be done. Because, you know, as you and I have talked about before, there, there, there's real frustration in America that there doesn't seem to be any action happening. You know, an arrest of, of bad guys, for instance, this weekend, everybody's going back and forth. Why was John Bolton, you know, why what, why did, why did they go in and search his, his place? Do you have any insight on this?

A (4:05)

Probably two things. One is that you remember he wrote that tell all book about his time as a, the national Security advisor.

B (4:13)

Right.

A (4:14)

And you know, again, some of this is conjecture. There's classified documents that were utilized for that, and whether he has them in his possession or not is, is my guess what they're looking for. Also, I can tell you that in just in experience as a prosecutor, that kind of thing happens very late in this, like late in the investigation where they're looking to corroborate things that they already have or missing a few things that they're looking for. But I also know this investigation has been going on for a while, including under the Biden doj.

B (4:50)

So I know the left wants on him specifically. Or is this part of a bigger case?

A (4:58)

That's my understanding, related to him. Now we can talk about Russiagate. And I think this is separate from that. This is, I think, just a guy who probably, you know, has an enormous ego and has access to a lot of classified documents and was probably pretty sloppy about it. And that's probably what the Bolton stuff's about. So interestingly, I know the left, the Washington Post has an editorial today about, oh my gosh, this is lawfare now against a political opponent. That's not what this is with John Bolton. And I also think as relates to that.

B (5:30)

Wait, wait, why do you say that? Why do you say that?

A (5:32)

Because I think Bolton in and of himself, independent of the Russiagate stuff, that Bolton was, was mishandling classified documents. And that's what the, that's what the raid on his home is all about. And I also know that, that this investigation about Bolton predates Trump 47. So you know that what that tells me is that Bolton was, was sloppy about all this. And, and he's got a big mouth, as everyone can kind of observe, and that, that caught up to him. And we'll see. I mean, they haven't, he's not been charged with anything yet, but when you're doing something like they just did, that's usually pretty late in the stage investigation. Yeah.

B (6:17)

Okay. All right. And now you go on from there. You were talking about.

A (6:21)

So I think, yeah, when you talk about Russiagate, this is one. You know, I was on your, your radio show last week talking about the book Last Line of Defense, how to Beat the Left in Court. You're great to have me on to talk about those fights, and we can talk more about those, too, and people can get it on Amazon. But if you want to kind of understand, this is why the Russia Gate, I think, is, it's such a fulcrum for all of the things that happened over the next eight years, really is because in my view, it gave them license, it gave the left Democrats license to make Donald Trump into something that he never was with this threat to democracy. He's a Manchurian candidate, he is a Russian agent, all of these things. Even Hillary Clinton, after she lost, called, you know, him an illegitimate president. And it all stemmed. We know now when Tulsi Gabbard declassified those documents a couple of weeks ago. We also know why they were so hellbent on President Trump never getting back in office. We know why they didn't want Tulsi Gabbard in that position. All these sort of like, you know, reformers and disruptors that would be in administration inside the castle now. That's why they, they don't want them there. It's why, by the way, Dr. J. Bhattacharya, who was a plaintiff in my Missouri vs Biden censorship lawsuit as a guy Foushee tried to destroy because he talked about natural immunity, he's now the head of nih. Right. So, so we're a very, very interesting time historically. And I think you, you put this stuff in context as well as anybody, Glenn. It's easy to. And I'll get back to the Russia Gate thing in a sec, but it's easy to kind of like, look at all of this stuff. As a, as a new news cycle and something new and you move on, this stuff is critical. So we all know now that a Soros funded organization worked with the Hillary Clinton campaign to distract from her email problem and create a narrative that President Trump was somehow affiliated or sponsored by or preferred by Vladimir Putin and the Russians. That's false. Totally not true. Was, you know, been made true or been made verified a thousand different ways now, but it didn't matter to him. That then becomes the Steele dossier, which then through the intelligence community becomes laundered as something real. And the people that knew it was false, Barack Obama knew it was false. Brennan knew was false. The CIA director Comey, the FBI director knew it was false. Clapper knew it was false. A guy by the name of James Baker who was the general counsel at the FBI News false. Interestingly, James Baker then becomes general counsel at Twitter during the 2020 election when the Hunter Biden laptop story should have unfolded and it didn't. But anyway, so these guys knew it was, they knew it was nonsense. They laundered this report to spy on him, number one, as a presidential candidate, and then when he wins, to undermine him and his presidency, try to sideline a duly elected president, United States, from achieving his agenda. They never forgave him for going down the escalator in the first place. And so then of course you have the first term, then the Russia stuff is used as a predicate for, well, the, you know, we took the deposition of Elvis Chan. You can read about it in the book. A couple interesting tidbits from the deposition with Elvis Chan. One, they were pre bunking the Hunter Biden laptop story all throughout 2020. They, the FBI had the laptop in their possession in late 2019. They knew it was real. So they're having these monthly, then weekly meetings with the biggest companies in the history of the world and telling them, be aware of a Russian hack and leak operation coming. Yoel Roth, who was like the integrity guy at Twitter, said in an affidavit that he specifically referenced the Hunter Biden laptop. Okay, so the FBI knows it's real. They're telling them, be aware of the Hunter Biden laptop. It's not real. It's, it's a Russian hack and leak operation. Think about this. President Trump is the President of the United States at the time. So this is how, how deep the rot was inside the admin state, deep state, whatever you want to call it. They continue to try to undermine it. They continue to try to make sure that he wasn't going to be president again. And so that happens in 2020. That apparatus, then once Biden comes into office, all those folks then just simply turn the switch on this misinformation, disinformation game they've been playing to censor Americans. Now they're inside now they've got the keys to the, to the, to the Corvette, and they turn it on the American people. Right? And, and it, it continues, of course, then when he's running for president again, he's a threat to democracy. And they, you know, Jack Smith comes around the, you know, the number two at Atlanta meets with the White House all the same day. The number three person, the doj, goes to Alvin Bragg's office to try to put him in jail for the rest of his life. So if you put that, like, if you, if you are having this conversation, like this seems like a Hollywood movie or some kind of coup plot in a third world banana republic, but it was happening here. And one of the reasons why I wrote the book is because we can't forget that. Like, we can't forget the things we were fighting against for four years and the strategies we employed in Missouri to win when I was a attorney general, like on the COVID vaccine shot or the censorship lawsuit or the student loan debt forgiveness case or the DEI struggle sessions or the ESG policies that we launched investigation. Anyway, so you can't forget.

B (12:02)

That's what everybody. But that's what everybody would say. It's old news. It doesn't matter anymore. I mean, they learned this from Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. I didn't have sex. Yes, you did. No, I didn't. Yes, I did. No, I didn't. After a year and a half. Okay, yes, I did. It doesn't matter anyway, right? So explain why this stuff matters. Why do we have to know it? Why does it matter that we correct it?

A (12:29)

Yeah, there's a, there's a Czech writer, Milan Kadir, who, who wrote that the struggle against power is the struggle against memory and forgetting. And if you believe in this report, if you believe in this republic, it's kind of an aberration in human history. The founders were very well aware of this. They created separation powers and federalism essentially to have ambition. Right? Ambition, all these things to protect individual liberty. What we saw during COVID Let's just take Covid, for example. What we saw during COVID was. I've said this, I think, on your show before. I don't think power necessarily corrupts, but I do think power reveals when you're in those positions what do you do with it? Very revealing about who you are, what kind of leader you are, what your intentions are, what your motivations are. And in Covid, we saw, you know, people who never should add power, had way too much of it and exercise it in ways that I thought, you know, were. Were unimaginable. And for me, honestly, that kind of. And I, I write in the book, it was this inflection point in my life of. I looked around and I saw the force masking of 5 year olds. I saw compulsory Covid shots of the guy that's just trying to, you know, he's driving a forklift and he wants to feed his family. He's going to lose his job. Like, he's going to lose his job over this. So somebody had to do something. So we stepped up and did something. But, you know, there was police tape around playgrounds and bulldozing skate parks.

B (14:01)

I know.

A (14:02)

Like, you know what I mean? Like, it feels like a distant place, but it was here and not that long ago, five years ago. So I think, I think we have to understand that and never let it happen again.

B (14:13)

It's, it's not that. It's not that we just have forgotten. We haven't done anything. Nobody paid a price for that, did they? Foushee still out. The people who were. I mean, when you think of the crimes, and I mean actual crimes and you could call them, I think they rise to the crimes against humanity because of the number of people that died, the crimes that they committed doing research with the Chinese that they knew they were not allowed to do, but they were arrogant enough saying, we can control it, it's okay if we do it. They do it with China. Then to protect themselves, they concoct this unbelievable story, destroy even more people, while the disease that they made ravages the whole world. If that's not a crime against humanity, what is a crime against humanity?

A (15:13)

Yeah, and I will tell you that. And I lay it out in the book. We took Fauci's deposition and it was only the second time that he had his deposition taken. And you know, I write the book not for lawyers, although I hope lawyers read it. It's really to give your audience, like kind of an inside view. What is it? What's it like to be at the NIH in November of 2022 and ask Foushee questions for eight hours? Like, what's that like? And I will tell you that the other attorney general, Jeff Landry, who was in the case, had a copy of RFK junior's real Anthony Fauci in the middle of the table, which I thought was hilarious. I don't think that you didn't appreciate it, but what was telling, we spent probably the first half Glenn on the lab leak and asking him, you know, what were his relationships with, with certain people. And, you know, because, you know, in 2014, the United States of America said, we don't want to do gain of function research anymore.

B (16:17)

Yeah.

A (16:19)

But Fauci, he knew better. He's the expert. And so he starts, you know, funding the Eco Health alliance and to your point, effectively funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they did not have the same safety protocols that they should have had to conduct that kind of experimental research. And then you have this, this, you know, supercharged virus. And for, you know, for your audience, basically gain a function research is, let's create something that wouldn't exist in nature, that's so powerful that we would then create a vaccine to solve the problem. The reason why most sane scientists don't want to do it is because the idea that you'd be creating something that probably would never exist before with the risk that it could be unleashed on the world isn't worth the risk. Right. Like, you wouldn't want to do that and end up with COVID 19, which is what we ended up with. And it swept through the world, especially in the first wave. Now you get to Omicron. It's, you know, it's. For most people, it's a seasonal virus. If you have a bunch of comorbidities, it's a different deal. But again, one of the lessons of COVID was we treated the 80 year old in the nursing home the same as the five year old in the classroom. Classroom, which was totally insane. But again, what happens when you have this kind of group think that creeped in. But anyway, Fauci's deposition was instructive in that, you know, he claimed to be the science, but then said, I can't recall about 174 times, as I recall, he didn't like to be questioned. He sent his chief deputy over to China in the beginning days of the pandemic to kind of survey what China was doing. And boy, he came back as a big proponent of lockdowns. And as you remember, that's not what Trump's ethos was. And that was the beginning, that was the beginning of the divide where the Democrats would, you know, they would, they would, they would obsess over President Trump because he stopped flights going in and out of China. Even though that was absolutely the right thing to do, because it was Donald Trump. And so you see this in crime in D.C. right now. There's. Whatever he does, they take the opposite point of view. But Fauci then became this opposition leader, and there were Fauci candles, you know, that were burning across the country. Yeah, so it is. I think I mentioned this to you last week when I was on your show, but it reminded me. So I ran into. I met RFK Jr. In Utah at the Republican Ag Conference. This. I think it was the same weekend we had had dinner out there. And he came and he had seen some of the work that I was doing in Missouri, and it thanked me for that. And we. And we had a conversation with a small group and him. And he reminded me of something I had not thought about in a long time was the Milgram experiment, which was this Yale study in the 1950s where a guy in a white lab coat and a clipboard would welcome people into a room. And there were people paid on the other side, paid actors on the other side of the wall. And you were being asked then to turn up the dial of pain if there was a wrong answer. And what they discovered was in the experiment, that people would scream on the other side, including screams almost, you know, of intense pain, and then the next time, nothing, like the person was maybe dead. And the willingness of some people to continue to turn that dial is what haunted me as we were talking about. And the point was, man, if you get somebody in power like Fauci who's just spewing worse than nonsense but dangerous stuff, there are a lot of people that are willing to go along with it, and you also need to have people who are willing to stand up to it. And I felt like that was.

B (19:56)

It was because if. If I remember right, with Milgram, it was because of the white coat, because they were an expert and the person that was just turning the dial wasn't an expert. And so they looked at the expert. And that's why Fauci kept saying, you can follow the science. Follow the science, follow the experts. Listen to the experts. Because if you. If you cloak it in a white coat, you cloak it with authority, most people will just go along with the authority. And this experiment was done on. How did. How did you get the Germans to go along with putting people in ovens? How did that happen? That explained it. And it also explains Foushee.

A (20:40)

It does. And it also, by the way, and I think, Glenn, in the last line of defense, people can get. Now the Biggest chapter or the, the most in the book. I spent a lot of time on the Missouri versus Biden lawsuit. There's the COVID wars, there's, there's the Missouri versus Biden. There's a bunch of other stuff. Second Amendment fights. We had Soros funded, prosecutors, ESG dei, all the non masking, all that stuff. But in, in that big chapter, what is interesting is that yes, you have these authority figures and they were able to sort of cloak their, their what they were doing in the science or being an expert. The next phase though, if you believe in America and you believe in the First Amendment, I think is perhaps the most chilling, which was if you dare to question it, if you dare to question it, you were, you were silenced. They were punishing dissent. You were deplatformed people, their lives were ruined all because somebody said something is crazy. Like Dr. Bhattacharya said, which is natural immunity is actually still a thing. Or you know what, maybe all what we're doing with these kids, they're the, the downsides. Worse, they're going to have psychological problems. There's gonna be loss of learning. And people were punished for that too. This was the government and the government was outsourcing that to these big tech behemoths and then also universities through a bunch, through NGO nexus that was doing the dirty work for the government there too.

B (22:08)

Why?

A (22:08)

Why? Control. Control, right. It's not necessarily a foreign concept in the history of man, but the idea is that in this country we're supposed to believe in, in your ability to express yourself. And the government isn't going to control that. By the way. This was. We filed the lawsuit. I mean there was in May of 2022. And I had seen enough. I had seen Psaki at the podium talking about she's flagging things for Facebook. And along with my Solicitor General, John Sauer, who's now the Solicitor General of the United States. Brilliant lawyer. We're just sitting around like, what is going on? This is weird. And then you get the whole Ministry of the. Not the Ministry of Truth, but the disinformation governance port. Yeah, right, yeah, that name was already taken. And they were the government. The government was going to be in charge of deciding what the truth was. That's crazy. You know, people can make those decisions themselves. But that was under attack too in this, in these dark days. And so, you know, in America we just, I think when we see that kind of stuff, we got to fight back. And that's the lesson in the book.

B (23:16)

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A (24:12)

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B (24:26)

So I go back to yes, we have to fight back, but nobody's been arrested for any of that. And remember I described it as a crime against humanity and you didn't necessarily disagree with that label. So if you don't go to jail for something like that, I mean, what do you go to jail for?

A (24:51)

Right? And I think, look, I get this question a lot now, which is now that we're on the other side of the fever dream and we are in a position now to do something about it, not just uncover. But I think, look, if for me, the first piece of this has to be transparency, which I think is the phase that we like what Tulsa Gabbard did three weeks ago is this, is.

B (25:16)

This coming with COVID Yeah, yeah, I'm.

A (25:21)

Pretty confident of that.

B (25:22)

Okay.

A (25:23)

But let's take Russiagate. I do believe, Glenn, I do believe you're going to see indictments. I don't know how in a free country you could have people in those positions blatantly lie and try to subvert the will of people, try to defraud the United States of America and also potentially keep people off the ballot who have a First Amendment right to be on the ballot without legal consequences. And so how do you do that? Well, there's a couple of barriers, right? You've got A statute of limitations problem. Obama, ironically, because of the Trump decision in the United States versus Trump, presidential immunity is a thing. However, there is no immunity for a presidential candidate and Hillary Clinton. There's no immunity for a, for the CIA director. There's no immunity for the FBI director, and there's no immunity for, you know, Clapper in this regard either. So you've got a statue of limitations problem. However, a conspiracy gets you outside of that, and that is, I wrote an op ed last week. I think that's coming. I hope that comes. Because, you know, in criminal law, a conspiracy, or if you like the fuse and mile marker one and the explosion happens, even though you're not involved there on mile marker 10, you are responsible for the conspiracy. You are a part of the conspiracy that was ongoing for not just President Trump's, not just during the campaign in 2016, not just during his presidency in 2016-2020. And, you know, but even after all of that, as that continued, I think that's the hook. And there has to be accountability here. And I think that means criminal prosecutions. Now, the facts have to bear all of that out.

B (27:25)

Yeah.

A (27:25)

And you have to, you know, because we, listen, we still, I still believe in a country where, a country of laws and not of men, I don't think we want to do what they did, but I also think when people did what they did, they ought to be held accountable for it.

B (27:40)

So let me talk, let me change gears. Let me, let me go to Washington, D.C. and the president saying that, you know, Chicago might be next. Well, as I read the Constitution, he didn't have the right to do that. He does in D.C. but he doesn't have the right to do that in Chicago. You were the, you know, you were the AG for Missouri. St. Louis is on that really dangerous city list. Does he have a right to do it? Can he do it? Is there a way to do it? Is it right to do it?

A (28:12)

Well, let me, let me, let me sort of take the law enforcement angle of what you're asking in two separate parts. The first is actually last week we announced I had been talking to Cash Patel and other folks at the DOJ since the confirmation process about getting help in St. Louis. And, you know, Cash, I think, who I've known for a while, is committed to getting people out of Washington, D.C. and out into the field, into the country to help get that, get the FBI back to what it's supposed to do, which is to help tackle violent crime. And so there's a partnership now, St. Louis is going to get the largest infusion of per capita of permanent FBI agents anywhere in the country to work side by side with local law enforcement, to take not, not to be paper pushers, but like to actually bust up criminal gangs and put really bad people who are carjacking and terrorizing communities in jail for a long time. So I think that's a very good way to go about doing this. And I think hopefully Missouri will kind of lead the way on that. And when I was Attorney general also.

B (29:22)

But go ahead.

A (29:23)

I was going to say, I was going to say also what we did, and I mentioned it in the book too, but this is before the, the left wing loonies came in, but we had started something called the Safer Streets Initiative where we had people in the AG's office, my AG's office, deputized as Assistant U.S. attorneys to get around the Kim Gardner problem at the time. She's gone now in St. Louis, Soros funded prosecutor to prosecute violent crime in our federal courts with the U.S. attorney's office. So I think you're going to see hopefully some cooperation with state AG offices and U.S. attorney's office on that front as it relates to the National Guard, which, which is what you're asking. The president has very different authorities in Washington, D.C. than he does in other places. And when he, I think when he's talking about having the National Guard go places, the best, I think, example of what that really looks is think about what happened in Los Angeles, which seems like a million years ago is like two months ago. I know when I, when ICE agents were being attacked and assaulted. You can have the National Guard there to assist. The National Guard doesn't make arrests. The military doesn't make arrests. But the National Guard, I think can assist local law enforcement in keeping the peace and freeing up more resources for local law enforcement to do their job. So I think that's, that's what President Trump is talking about. And you know, it's amazing though, he's getting these big city mayors like in J.B. pritzker, who's the governor of Illinois or the mayor of Chicago to take the incredibly unpopular and stupid position, which is we don't need any help, nothing to see here. And so anyway, it's crazy.

B (31:03)

So is there a way to, you know, I was looking up Elliot Ness, you know, when I heard this story over the weekend and I talked a little bit about Elliot Ness, you know, the Untouchable, if you ever saw that movie, but it's based on a true story going into Chicago and and getting crime under control in Chicago. They used, you know, accounting, they used the IRS as their way to do it, and they cleaned Chicago up. Are there tools that are not traditional law enforcement tools that the President has? I mean, you know. Well, first of all, you know, the, the, the Constitution says unless civil rights violations, I think, are going on, and there is a, like a gross dismissal of federal law, something, something along those lines. Well, that seems like ice. You know, all these sanctuary cities. Are there things that we can do, he can do, besides send in the National Guard? Like, why aren't we cutting them off? Why aren't we just cutting these cities off? They need federal money. You don't get any federal money, right?

A (32:12)

Well, I think yes. And one way of doing that is like, let's say you have discriminatory DEI policies in your city. You just cut off all the federal grant dollars then related to anything.

B (32:24)

Right.

A (32:25)

That's one way to get at. Because the Democrats have used that as an inverse. Right. Well, if you take this money for a highway fund, then you gotta, you know, you gotta do X, Y and Z. I think you gotta. But. But the difference is we're trying to pull people back. I had Herme Dillon in front of my committee on the Judiciary Committee to talk about what her plans were for the civil Rights division of the Department of Justice. It was, it's just very exciting time.

B (32:47)

Because I've talked to Arme too. I love her. Doing a great job.

A (32:52)

A lot of people. A lot of people. And by the way, one of my guys, and I'm really proud of the team we had in the last line of defense, the book that's out, you know, John Sowers, the Solicitor General, the first four district court judges that President Trump is appointed to serve in district courts are. We're in my AG's office. They're coming to Missouri. One of the deputy solicitors, a guy named Jesus, who's like the chief deputy for, for Ms. Dylan. So there's just a lot of great Missouri ties to all the excitement that's happened. But look, that that division is perhaps been one of the most corrupted over the last 30 years. And so it's not a surprise to me that a bunch of them walked and left. But what they can get back to now is I think they probably need to find a couple of scalps in corporate America too, for the effect, like overtly racist policies that they've had in place to meet their global index score over the years. Yeah, right. And I think you got to get after that, I Think, you know, I know in the book that when we launched an investigation into the Net Zero Banking alliance, which is now kind of in retreat, you were talking about this probably before anybody was on esg, but we launched an antitrust investigation because, you know, these banks who control 40% of the capital in the United States were saying, we want portfolios that are going to be have net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The only way you can do that is first of all you collude. And second of all, you basically deny credit worthy applicants who have like diesel trucks on their family farms loans.

B (34:28)

Yep.

A (34:29)

And that's how expansive it was. So they've kind of backed away. A lot of this is a retreat. Coca Cola of course, had, you know, a seminar on having people explain how they can be less white. I mean, this stuff is overtly racist. So I think that Civil Rights division is going to have a field day and hopefully again push this stuff further and further in retreat. But I think there are things in, in motion right now that are, that are going to hold a lot of these really bad actors accountable who've done things, not just who are related to some of the biggest scandals in American history, even in corporate America where they bought all this nonsense and, and people were punished because of immutable characteristics.

B (35:07)

Talk to me a little bit about the Soros. You know, what you reveal in the book about going after the Soros Das and seeing all of the, seeing all the, the Soros people and money involved in politics.

A (35:23)

Well, I think I get asked this question a lot, which is, what, what's the point? Why, why did Soros, why did he kind of arbitrage the system here and for relatively little amount of money elect these Soros prosecutors across the country? And it happened in Chicago and Philadelphia and San Francisco and St. Louis and other places. If you're a student of history, you are of Marxism. What you kind of have to have before you really remake things is, is, is sort of disenchantment and chaos. People have to be kind of untethered from the traditional things that anchored them in life. Which by the way, another reason why Covid was so scary. You couldn't go to church, you know, you couldn't see your family. You couldn't see your grandmother who was dying like.

B (36:14)

And, and if you wanted to get together with your family, you were called a killer. So they did everything. And if you were on the other side, you were told to stay away from that member of your family because they were dangerous.

A (36:29)

I mean, that's right.

B (36:30)

Everything to destroy Everything traditional in, in.

A (36:34)

All the human bonds. Yes. All the human bonds that traditionally tie us together, those were meant to be severed again because the immense power and control these people had. They could go on TV on a Monday morning, some county health official, and tell people, it's okay to live your life, or it's not. We're going to destroy your business week this week. Or we're not. We're going to let you allow people in. And I'll tell you the other chilly aspect of that, Glenn, is that there were tip lines opened. I mean, 10 walls opened. A tip line telling your neighbor. So one of the stories I tell in the book, the last line of defense that people can get is we opened up our own tip line, but not to, not to oppress people, but to expose the oppression. So when we sued 50 plus school districts for their mask mandates, we opened up that tip line. Tell us who's actually still forcing these kids to wear masks? We heard stories that were unbelievable in Missouri, not, this isn't in New York City, this is in Missouri because a lot of these school administrators have gone to these conferences and they've gotten the, the slide decks and they buy into all this nonsense. But there were kids who refused to wear a mask, who were made to sit by themselves in isolation in the middle of a school gym on a stage by themselves. Wow. There were deaf kids. There were deaf kids who had legitimate reasons. They can't learn anything. And they were being told, you can't attend an after school program. Like, the punishment that went along with non compliance was really crazy. And then of course, you know, with the CRT stuff, we open that tip line up again and we document it in the book. There are kids being forced to do something called a privilege walk. We're like, closure. Everybody in the class, grade school kids, close your eyes. If you're white, take a step forward. If your parents are married, take a step forward. If your father has a job, take a step forward. And then open your eyes and you look around and that was your privilege. And think about the division that creates among our kids who are just there to learn. They don't, you know, all of this craziness that adults, you know, they should have known better, but they were all doing this stuff. It's just been a while. They did know. They did know better. And again, we saw school boards flip because of it. And I think by and large, 2024, in addition to President Trump being kind of the singular political figure, the American people rejected all of this stuff. It was all in front of them. And it's a kind of a return to common sense. But, you know, there's just a lot of stuff that was going down I swayed way off of. Your original question was Glenn, what was your original question? I started.

B (39:01)

I don't even remember. I mean, I've enjoyed the conversation. Yeah.

A (39:07)

So it's, it's a disenchantment. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a chaos that can create it so that then, you know, they have a chance to sort of remake society in their own image.

B (39:17)

And I think you have to buy into, you have to understand, because that's the number one question that comes to me all the time on George Soros. Why? I mean, he wants to make money. Why would he do anything? Because he doesn't believe in the system. He doesn't believe. He believes there is another system that is better and it would be better for him, wouldn't be better for everybody else, but it would be better for him if it was designed by him. And he also has said over and over again, I like to experiment with revolution and things like that. Well, I don't, but he does. And so you have to understand, you just don't think like George Soros does.

A (39:52)

Yeah. I'll give you just one, one glimpse inside the book where, where I saw it firsthand in, in the summer of love of 2020, when, of course, you know, you could, you couldn't go outside and you certainly couldn't protest, exercise your First Amendment right. Unless it was a Black Lives Matter rally.

B (40:13)

Right.

A (40:13)

And then a riot and evening. Like, remember that there were a thousand. We put it in the book. Thousand. I think that was, by the way, for most normal people, that was kind of their breaking point. They're like, why are a thousand health officials, public health officials writing a letter saying, yeah, we know, we told you you can't go outside and do stuff. But if you're protesting, quote, unquote, systemic racism, it's racism, it's fine. Like, that was just correct. Totally insane. But anyway, in that summer, and your audience will remember this, in St. Louis, a black Lives Matter group was marching to the white female mayor's house in the city. And they were walking through a kind of a, you know, the central West End, where there's some really beautiful homes, was a private street. So on their way to the mayor's house, they come across the McCloskey's home. And Mark and Patricia McCloskey, in this famous image, of course, come out in the pink polo and the ar. And, and to protect their property. Like they were threatening to kill their dog and burn their house down. And they're outside there and the, the media would like that was unforgivable. How dare you stand up and protect your lives or property. Right. And they became obviously a big story. So just to give you some sense of how crazy it was, the, the rioters in that summer hardly were charged and certainly not to the extent that they could have been, including, you know, there was a police officer, David Dorn, Captain David Dorn was protecting his friend's store that night, was murdered. And so all this is happening. So instead of going after violent criminals, what does the prosecutor do? She charges the McCloskeys with, with, with a crime for merely exercising their Second Amendment rights. And so we stepped in, wrote a brief. Ultimately the case was they were pardoned by the governor after they, you know, they entered into a plea deal. But it just goes to show you, there's just a very weird. And again, I think we're, I think it's in retreat now, but this I, a misplaced sense of, of who the victims are in this, in this world. You know, the, the actual victims of violent crime are much lower on the totem pole than the quote, unquote, victims of systemic racism who are committing crimes themselves.

B (42:28)

I, I'm not sure, I'm not sure it's in retreat. It is publicly and it is with the general population. But these are die hard radicals who have done everything in their power to move it this far. If I were that, I wouldn't be giving this up. I'd be like, yeah, it's a setback. Double down, double down. And it seems as though they are doubling down.

A (42:57)

Well, I think the best example that, and what, what we're watching very closely is on dei, like they, you know, the name that they tried to make, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion, all these words that many sound so flowery, or the Institute of Peace, you know, which is crazy. But people, people are aware of it. But that's my concern. And what we want to be watched was that it just doesn't go underground and call, be called something else. But it's the same kind of cultural Marxism, but by another name. Yeah.

B (43:34)

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A (45:19)

I am generally optimistic.

B (45:22)

Okay, so let me just take you. Let me just take you through this. What was the first thing that you saw when you went, holy cow, I can't believe this is happening?

A (45:36)

Yeah, I think for me, and I mean, this is not just the gratuitous plug for the book. Why I wrote the book. I felt like in that job as Attorney general, I saw the whole landscape for the first time. I saw we beat back the election lawsuits in 2020 from Mark Elias. I saw the censorship. I saw the DEIs in a local school district in Springfield, Missouri. I saw it all play out in the middle of America, in the heartland, where the forces were relentless and they wanted to shut down our lives and they wanted to force you to get a shot that, you know, that people can debate whether you should get it or not or you would lose everything. You have to confess to crimes of people who weren't related to. All this stuff was unfolding and I wanted to lay it out, but to Answer your question Specifically, I would say that in the Missouri vs Biden lawsuit, I had a hunch that something was much deeper than what they were saying at the podium about working with social media companies. We made it. When we filed the lawsuit, of course it was lampooned as attention seeking and a conspiracy theory. But we made a very important strategic decision that we outlined is we sought discovery before we sought the injunction. The injunction, of course, is to stop the government from doing something you're objecting to. The discovery is sort of all the evidence that you would normally get later after you get a temporary restraining order, maybe, and then you go to the full blown trial and all that. We sought discovery first. When we got that first round of stuff back, I couldn't believe it. I. I couldn't. I could. This is what, by the way, this was just what was available. We know now that they went underground with private email addresses with, with who they were communicating with. But they were, Glenn, they were secret portals created for high ranking government officials and these big tech companies to say, this is it. Take it down. And they did it. They would threaten Section 230 protections, they would threaten investigations. Biden's up there saying, you guys are killing people. These social media companies again, the biggest companies in the world are changing terms of service. That kind of leviathan of government weaponized against people. Half the country is, Is pretty scary. And. And was. Was very eye opening for me. And it, but it, I will tell you, it gave a resolve. It gave me resolve when I saw what they were doing to kids in Covid and the censorship. It gave me resolve. And it's. And. And it's made me the senator that I am now, but I wish it never would have happened.

B (48:38)

But you are always been a fighter. I mean, I look back in my childhood and I didn't get this till I was probably maybe even 50. I grew up prime of my childhood really, in the 70s, you know, 1976, the bicentennial. I live in a town called Mount Vernon. It's dying because a mall comes into town. My dad is a small business owner. They're trying to come up with something that will, you know, revitalize the town. My mom and dad come up with, well, we live in Mount Vernon, Washington. The bicentennial is coming up. Why don't we make this like a little colonial, you know, colonial thing. And so I was steeped in all of this, you know, American history and also fighting for our little small town. And I didn't even realize until I think my wife said it to me, I might have been 40 or 50. And she said, you realize you're just reliving your mom and dad's life. It's not a small town anymore. You're fighting for your country and you're using, you know, all the patriotic trappings that, you know, you grew up with. And you have that same zeal for America and the same zeal for his small town. So what was it with you? What have you found? Anything from your childhood? Have you always been this fighter that looks for the injustice? Or is this.

A (49:58)

Happen somehow when you write. When I've never written a book before. And when I wrote the book, it requires a lot of reflection. I, I actually saw, I. This picture you see, or what am I pointing to here? That's actually of me in the Congressional baseball game. So I, I played a lot of. I played a lot of sports growing up, including a couple college sports. And, and I don't know, I was just thinking about that question that you asked. Like, Covid was an inflection point, but what was it? What was stirred inside that in that moment, there was no question, but I had to be a defender. I had to be the last line of defense. Well, when I was growing up, I played, I mean, grade school soccer. I was the sweeper, which is the last guy. In baseball, I played in the outfield. In basketball, I played in the paint. And in football, I was the free safety. So I suppose there's something that God wired me through. Well, nature and nurture or both, to want to fight for the little guy and stand up and push back and it doesn't matter who's on the other side. It never mattered to me. I remember an incident I recount in the book too, of a kid with special needs that was being bullied on a bus in seventh grade. And I was outnumbered, but I thought it was, it thought it was unjust. I'm sure I didn't call it unjust in seventh grade, but so, and I.

B (51:30)

You know, they will in seventh grade. Now, this is an injustice. We must march. But anyway, go ahead.

A (51:35)

Right, but, but I can. I confronted the bullies and I shamed them with my words. I mean, I wasn't afraid to throw down either. Growing up where I grew up in a pretty working class neighborhood. So that wasn't, it was still kind of an honor culture, but they backed down. And I remember telling my dad about it, and he said, you know, you never let anybody pick on somebody who, you know, fault of their own has those kind of challenges. And then Stephen, I've talked to you about my son who's special needs and non verbal. And that has been only strengthened, I think in me now. I think God gave us Stephen to protect him and to. And that's why I entered public life. I wasn't, I was a lawyer, I'd made partner, I was starting a family. I wasn't going to run for office. Stephen was born and he has a four hour seizure and he has all these challenges and I kind of went through this process of discernment, like what do you want to do with your life? And for me it was public service. So I ran for office and then, you know, I find myself here. So it's a combination of things. I've always loved this country. I've always believed in America and the promise of America. I suppose I've always had this kind of fighter, defender, DNA and through the catalytic experiences with my son and that kind of in the background of to serve, I, I'm doing what I do today and I feel like I'm exactly where I should be and I'm really grateful for it.

B (52:56)

So let me go back to the question. You're an optimist. I want you to be a realist. What is it that we're facing and what do we have to do? What are the odds of winning 10 years down the road?

A (53:11)

Well, if you had asked me this question a year ago versus today, my answer may have been, in all honesty, just a little bit different.

B (53:19)

It might have been wildly different.

A (53:22)

I will say though, that the American people, they saw the lockdowns, they saw the open borders, they saw the struggle sessions, they saw the leftist ideology, they saw the canceling, they saw the censorship, they saw the lawfare, they saw President Trump, you know, stare it all down and win. And the American people sat in that jury's box, in my view, and they delivered their verdict. They wanted reform because they still believe in America. And I do too. And I think I start the book, the first line in it, Glenn, is In November of 2024, the fever broke. And I believe that. I think we were captured by something that's hard to really explain but hopefully has cycled out. However, I am not naive, especially in foreign policy, definitely realist. I'm not naive. These are forces that aren't going away. They are in retreat and they have lost, but they're not going away. And again, the reason why I wrote the book is the Last Line of Defense. It's a playbook. Like it was the darkest days. We stood up, we fought back. We had a lot of big wins, but there is a playbook, because they have their playbook. But central to all of it is the courage, the courage that's necessary to stand in the arena. The courage that in the. In the middle of all the stuff when, you know, most people maybe aren't seeing it the same way you are, that you're still willing to stand up and push back and fight for the things that you believe in, no matter the cost. There's a lot of incentives to just go along with things, especially in my job. It's, you know, to go to the ribbon cuttings and all the stuff you can do, you can fill all your time with that. That's not me. Like, that's not me. I'm doing this because I. I believe in America, and it's worth fighting for. So it's not over yet. It's never over. The struggle against these forces and their ideology will never be over. But I will say that I'm. I am optimistic that America and the things that we believe in, we're going to win out. But it is under constant assault. It is under constant assault. And that is probably a realization that I know now more than ever, given some of my experiences.

B (55:41)

Senator, as always, good to talk to you. Thank you so much. Name of the book is the Last Line of Defense, and the author is Senator Eric Schmidt. God bless. Thank you.

A (55:53)

Thanks, Glenn.

B (55:59)

Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.