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The Victor Davis Hanson Show
The Last Line of Defense: Victor's conversation with Senator Mike Schmidt
01:05:04
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- [00:00]
Sponsor/Announcer
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Victor Davis Hanson
Probably.
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Sponsor/Announcer
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Victor Davis Hanson
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I'm alone today. Sammy and Jack are allowing me to do one of our interviews, which we do about every week or so. And I'm with the Senator from Missouri, Eric Schmidt. He was elected in 2022, is that correct? And he's got a new book, the Last Defense of the Last Line of How to Beat the Left in Court. And we're going to talk about the book and also his election and Missouri in general before we get to the book.
- [02:04]
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Senator Eric Schmidt
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Sammy (Sponsor Voice)
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Victor Davis Hanson
Is Missouri now solidly a red state after Claire McCaskill lost?
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Senator Eric Schmidt
It is. Yeah. It's for the first time actually in our state's history that every both US Senators, the governor, all the statewide office holders are Republicans. That's a super majority in both the House and the Senate in Missouri. So it's been pretty dramatic. It's taken place over the last, I'd say, 20 years as Missouri. As you know, Victor was sort of this ultimate bellwether state in the 20th century.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, Harry Truman.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
State Harry Truman and voted for the winner in every election of the 20th century except one time with Adlai Stevenson. So you kind of. Missouri's always been this place and still is, but certainly leans a little more right where it's got urban, suburban, exurban, rural. If your message works well in Missouri, it typically works well across the country. It's why a lot of presidential candidates over the years have spent a lot of time in Missouri. But yeah, it's definitely shifted to the right. And actually I think because of this long populist streak that Missouri's always had, President Trump has really supercharged that. He has tapped into it in a way. And if you think of Missouri's history was it was sort of the, a real stronghold for Andrew Jackson. Yeah, it was, it was always kind of skeptical of a federal government telling us what to do with our lives a thousand miles away. That's all that's in the DNA. Even when Democrats would represent Missouri, that's always been the DNA of our state, the show me state. So yeah, it's it. But it is solidly red now, that's for sure.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. And it has, it's kind of followed or parallel with Iowa. I remember Iowa used to be solidly blue. It's the same phenomenon, I guess in.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
The Ohio, Ohio, Indiana. All those states are, all the state.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Is, is the enclave of, of blue Missouri and St. Louis and Kansas, just the two cities.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah, it's really interesting. You used to have rural Missouri represented by a lot of Democrats. When you had Democrats who were pro life, pro gun, pro union Democrats, they just don't exist anymore in our state. So you really kind of have these progressive coasts in, in St. Louis City and in Kansas City where the mayors in the past have often competed to sort of who can be more progressive and that kind of thing. And it's obviously led to a lot of challenges along the way. But yeah, that is pretty much it. 2016 was really the last vestige, the last gasp of a Democrat party that had a gubernatorial candidate or somebody like that that could appeal to rural Missouri. And then of course, Claire McCaskill lost in 2018. And then, you know, I just think now in many ways it's sort of a primary state. But that's, that's brand new. That is like a very recent phenomenon in.
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Victor Davis Hanson
She, she had, she had kind of a transmogrification. She used to at least feign the idea that she was an old style Democrat. And then when she lost, she got on date MSNBC and bought into the Russian collusion.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
And yeah, you know, she, you know, you've been around this stuff long enough, kind of have you see things for what they are. But I always thought she's a big phony, honestly. She would do this daughter rural Missouri thing and then badmouth rural Missouri and say, you know, would she go down to the Boot Hill, which is that part of Missouri in southeast corner that, you know, kind of shapes, helps shape the map of Missouri. She would, you know, not, you know, she would, she would tell people in St. Louis that area doesn't matter. And I think in this modern age of media, all that stuff caught up to her. She could get away with it for a while. But that con job sort of caught up to her and she is, you know, who she really is now on msnbc, just spouting off hysteria daily.
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Victor Davis Hanson
It's crazy. Are you confident in of the 2026 midterms? I know the Senate is a little bit more confident than the House that the Trump counter revolution will continue on unimpeded.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
I am, I can't, it's harder for me to speak to sort of what the House map looks like. I think the Senate map is pretty, is pretty favorable for us. You know, Georgia, I can't believe actually Democrat senators from Georgia. So hopefully there's pickup opportunity there. But, but I think that by and large the states where the Democrats are really trying to play, we should be able to hold. I wouldn't be surprised if we at least hold serve on the number that we have, 53. And the house is different. But you've got of course this redistricting and actually in Missouri there's going to be an effort I think to move from the, the 6, 2 map to a 7, 1 map. And then you've got of course what's happening in Texas. The Democrats have given gerrymandered their states. They've squeezed all the juice there is to squeeze in places like California and our neighbor to the east, Illinois. And so I think that that might provide some, some opportunities. But I will say as somebody who is very much aligned with President Trump and Vice President Vance, we have, I'm excited this is a Republican Party. I'm, I'm very comfortable and I grew up in a blue collar area. My dad, you know, works seven days a week in the midnight shift. So this is the party I always dreamed would be the Republican Party. So it' broader coalition now, but there are more lower propensity voters in the, in our coalition now. Right. So in fact presidential Years are better for us. I think. Now that didn't used to be the case for Republicans, but it is now. So we just got to make sure that we, we turn people out and there's a, you know, people understand there's a reason to get out the polls like they did in 2024.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. I was reading the data on the 2024 election and usually the Democrats claim that they have all of the silent voters that they have to get out because if they always say to us, if everybody could vote mandatory, we would win by a landslide. But it was the opposite in 2024 that there was a large, the polls of registered voters who did vote and the people who were just polled that were registered but didn't vote, the Republicans would have picked up. They would have won 51%. Trump would. There was that many people that were for Trump. That's a big shift that it suggests that the Trump counter revolution, or whatever you want to call it's going on has a lot more support than people can detect. It seems that way.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah. No, I think that's right. And so that's the challenge for us in this, in, like I said, this new coalition is to make sure people get out to vote in the midterms. But I think it's also reflective of the fact that the Republican Party now is the party of working class and people who really felt like they were left behind of this kind of globalization and this kind of catering to elites and seeing what that did to their communities, seeing what it did to their schools. And it's also interesting, you look at those 2024 numbers. I mean, every demographic, every county really got redder.
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Victor Davis Hanson
It did.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
So even in places that are Democrat areas, they've shifted more to the right. And that is something very significant. It used to be, you know, when, when I was in college, you talk about realigning elections every 30 years or so. I think that's happening much quicker now. And President Trump has been the accelerant, which is, which is a good thing.
- [12:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. You mentioned middle class. And I was looking at a lot of the data. Trump did not, I mean, he, he had kind of maxed out on the so called white vote. 61 and then 59, I think, and he got about 58%. That was steady over three elections. But what was fascinating was Hispanic males went up to 54%, black males somewhere between 23 and 25, he picked up another 10 or 15% from Asians. So you get the impression that whether by intent or it's just a natural phenomenon that class is starting to replace race. In other words, maybe a black truck driver or a white electrician or Hispanic roofer have more in common, at least politically or electorally, than they do with their elites of each party that represent them in academia or the media. That's really new, I think.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah, I think that's right. And it's, it's really, I, I refer to it as a multi ethnic working class party.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
So that's what it is, you know, and you've got people who, and honestly the Democrats have sort of bet on this Democrat or demographics is destiny kind of thing. But you really, as you mentioned, the Hispanic voters who tend to even be more conservative sometimes than their white counterparts in the suburbs who might vote Republican. No, they are voted, you know, a lot more Republican this go around. So I think all those things sort of bode well for us in the long term as far as like just structurally. I think that the key now is to make sure we continue to deliver and making sure that we don't, you know, stray away from that. And I think just some of the things that we mentioned, Missouri is this bellwether and what happened. And I think culturally, you know, you know, you think about what Pat Buchanan was talking about 30 years ago too, right? Culturally, that's where they lost the voters, the Democrats did. It's why the relatively conservative guy from a rural county in Missouri whose father, or maybe he himself maybe identified As a Democrat 30, 40 years ago, they don't anymore because they can't believe that this woke ideology took hold. They can't believe that you have struggle sessions in the military. They can't believe you'd be paying for Guatemalan sex changes through usaid. They can't believe that you'd have this trans hysteria stuff that's swept through the Democrat Party and men can play in women's sports. All those sort of things factor in. But the economic issues I think are always front and center. And I think Republicans, and through President Trump specifically, when he walked down that or came down that elevator, I should say a decade ago that overton window really shifted. And you look at immigration as sort of the classic example now you've got, you've got big majorities that support the mass deportation effort that 10 years ago if you would have pulled it, I don't know if it would have been the same. But I think the Democrats when they got into office with Joe Biden just opened the floodgates.
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Victor Davis Hanson
And people, I don't think they under. I live in a community that's about 95% Mexican American. And they had no idea they were flying people into The Fresno airport two, four in the morning, you know, six, 700 every night. And then the Democrats thought that was demography as destiny or the new Democratic majority, as they said. But where do they go? They go into dialysis centers, they go into schools of Hispanic communities and then they have to spend all this money on bilingual education or there's gang members that pick on their kids because they don't speak Spanish. And the Democrats were just oblivious to all that.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
Right.
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Victor Davis Hanson
And it really boomeranged. And then it was also the way they talked to them. It was almost, you don't know what's good for you, but open borders and 10,000 people a day illegally is good for you. You don't know that transgendered biological men are good for you in women's sports. You don't know.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
Even though you have never, even though you've never referred to a relative of yours as Latinx, we're going to tell you that that's the right term. You know what I mean?
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. And they did it in such a way that was insulting. We're with Senator Eric Schmidt and he's got a new book, the Last Line of Defense. We're going to talk to him about that specifically in a minute when we come back from our sponsor.
- [16:57]
Sammy (Sponsor Voice)
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- [17:57]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Com.
- [18:00]
Sammy (Sponsor Voice)
To get free shipping and 365 day returns. That's quince.comVictor and we'd like to thank Quince for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show. And we now return you to the current episode.
- [18:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
And we're back with Senator Eric Schmidt. Senator, this is a really timely book because in one sense you guys in the Republican Party control the House, you control the Senate, you control the White House, you control, I guess six to three on many cases, the Supreme Court. And yet I was taken back that of these 750 district judges, maybe 400 of them are left wing. But your book is talking how the left has used the, the courts and how you as an Attorney general and others tried to stop it. And that expertise, how do you stop these cherry picking district judges? Is the whole idea that they're going to be eventually overturned, but each one in succession can run out the clock on the Trump administration.
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Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah, so I think a couple of reasons why I wrote the book. One was having lived through this, we're on the other side of this fever dream now. For those four years before I was a senator, I was the Attorney General of Missouri. We really led the charge in a lot of these big fights and to kind of hold the dam. Right, hold the line, hence the title of the book, Last Line of Defense. And so whether that meant we filed the lawsuit on the vaccine mandate case, took that to the Supreme Court, and we won. We had the student loan debt forgiveness case, that was Missouri, took it to the Supreme Court. We won. I filed that Missouri vs Biden censorship case that exposed this vast censorship enterprise that the Biden regime entered into with big tech, and we were able to expose that. And so even in those dark days when President Trump and his allies were out of power, it kind of fell to a relatively unknown group of people to fight those fights. We did it. We wanted, I wanted to share those lessons about what we did and what it means for the fights ahead. So to answer your question, I think that's exactly right. I was saying very early on because of just the sheer number of, you know, Joe Biden appointed, you know, 200 plus district court judges. And by the time he got to that, you know, the end of his time, they were really radical. I mean, you could, couldn't even argue they were qualified. These were, these were leftist law professors that got lifetime appointments on the federal bench. And so you're going to have, especially at the district court, some decisions here or there that are insane and ridiculous. We've seen it even with Judge Boasberg, who is somehow got assigned these cases, even though he wasn't the emergency assignment judge that night and got it at 2 in the morning when he was on vacation. We can, we can work through that because as they're moving forward now, if you've noticed Victoria, at the appellate level at the Supreme Court, they're getting struck down. President Trump by and large is winning on these questions. Important questions about personnel and policy is principally on deportations. I mean, there was a massive effort to stop those deportations. There was a win or two here for the other side. But now the Supreme Court has basically greenlit the deportations. They've also on these universal nationwide injunctions. Importantly, in the last month, the Supreme Court said, yeah, you don't get to do that. We've seen this abuse. You don't get to do that anymore. That's going to kind of slow down the train wreck that the Democrats wanted to cause to derail President Trump's agenda. So I just think, you know, this last Line of defense book is sort of a, a field manual for what it was like to go up against this leftist lawfare machine and win. And I would also say what we need more than anything in this fight in the courts is courage. You know, in addition to those lawsuits I mentioned, you know, taking on the censorship enterprise, I got to see the whole landsc. I got to see the corruption not just at the highest levels of government, but the local superintendents that were forcing masking on kids. I sued 60 plus school districts in Missouri to say, you don't have any authority to force the masking or these ridiculous quarantine policies. And we were victorious there too. So I think when you're in that arena, when it, when there's a lot of heat around you, we really need people of courage who are going to stand up and fight back on all fronts.
- [22:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
One of the subtexts I got from your book is that maybe not explicitly, I think that was one of your themes, is that we assume that because the law school faculties are left wing and law students, especially in this generation, are left wing and blue chip law firms are left wing, that they have a lockhold on the use of the judiciary, kind of an anti democratic way to counterveam popular opinion. But you're saying that that's not necessarily true. If you understand the system that Republicans, maybe they don't want to adopt those tactics that they use to stymie, you know, they rather prefer legislative, but they can stop the judicial stuff, that they, they can create an expertise of their own, even though they're not, they're not traditionally known as the lawyer's party.
- [22:54]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah, we, look, we're not, we're outnumbered even today. And certainly when I was in law school in the late 90s, there were still, professors were still talking about the living constitution, which is total nonsense. But you had, I think you had this continuum. Now you had people like Antonin Scalia, now Clarence Thomas, who wrote an elegant prose about originalism and the law means what it is and the Constitution is fixed. It can't possibly mean just something that the judge made up that day, because if it means that, it means nothing at all. And so you do have a generation of people now who've come in and include me in this, who were inspired by those folks who, even though we're in the minority, can fight on that playing field and win. And we're not winning by trying to alter the will of the people. We're saying common sense should rule, the Constitution should rule. Take the vaccine mandates, for example. There's no way that osha, which was created to make sure forklifts beep when they back up, should be able to force the COVID shot on 100 million people. And we took that strategy and ultimately we were vindicated. There's no way that one person, the president, United States, without statutory authority, can wipe away a half a trillion dollars worth of student loan debt. And Missouri, because we had standing, because we had this little known loan servicing agency called Mohela, we brought that case and we were able to win if Missouri doesn't bring that lawsuit. I think this is an important point. The big question in that case, Victor, was who has standing? Because just general taxpayer standing wasn't going to work. But we identified, even though the bureaucrats in Mohela probably didn't want me to bring that lawsuit, I didn't care. That was my job and to represent the interests of the people of Missouri. And so I just think it's understanding that system and knowing that the left has been fighting in that arena for a very long time. And if we really want to save this country and if we really want to keep the policies that President Trump has put in place that we believe in, we got to be willing to fight in court, too. And again, this Last Line of Defense book is that playbook for not just the war stories and the history that took place the last four years that, that people sometimes might forget, but how we go do that into the future.
- [24:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Do you see it as a constant last line of defense on these district court rulings, or do you think that the more that they file them and the more they get stay, they get rejected or stayed or overturned by circuit court and the Supreme Court, that eventually you start building up a body or corpus of precedence and then they say they can be rejected much more quickly and it will start to fade out, or you think they're to double down and, and it's a great question.
- [25:32]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah, it's a great question. I think actually what's happened is because of the abuse that we saw early on with these radical activist judges and the nationwide injunctions, it forced the Supreme Court's hand. The Supreme Court said, look, we, we can't be getting these emergency appeals from injunctions, from nationwide injunctions every other day on something that one district court judge decides for the whole country. That was never what this was intended. And what the Supreme Court said was, hey, you have a case in controversy for the parties that are involved. You get to rule on that. But you don't get to say that some terrorist immigrant classification in a four states away that this will somehow affect the ability to deport Ms. 13 members in Arizona. Like you don't get to do that. And so that I think was a very significant, probably underrated decision because that was the. Think of that as the assembly line of the lawfare that the Democrats wanted to have en masse against President Trump's agenda. And the Supreme Court has already said, you can't do that. They've also rejected, I think, a lot of these arguments that somehow the commander in chief or the, the chief executive of the country doesn't have control over the executive branch. Of course he does. It's the only person elected by the entire country. And all those agencies effectively, you know, roll out from the authority that the president himself has this sort ofCore Article 2 powers. And so I think the more that, you know, we were able to establish, I think some important precedents on a lot of cases, I think now those are playing out as we roll into this new administration. I will also say, I think the Trump administration in the 47 term versus the 45 term are very prepared for this. There is a benefit for this historic comeback of a non consecutive term in that he's got a great team. There are no more like establishment like figures, I don't think impeding progress. And they thought very deeply about these executive orders and their agenda. And I think that that kind of preparation and thoughtfulness now is withstanding a lot of judicial scrutiny.
- [27:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know that, you know, it was kind of fascinating. I looked at some of the Supreme Court rulings. Conservatives have been very critical of John Roberts, especially because of the Obamacare. But actually when you looked at, he kind of, he was pretty good on all of these. He stepped up.
- [27:59]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah. And I would, I think, I think, Victor, the reason why, if you could paint Roberts with, with a single brush, which is always a little dangerous, he's really kind of an incrementalist. You know, Clarence Thomas is of a different school, certainly Scalia was a different school, but. But Roberts wants to move a little bit slower. Right. But again, I think when you force his hand on things that really threaten the judiciary, like the nationwide injunction issue, you know, he's, he's in line because he sees the dangers of those excesses. So, yeah, I think that on the ones that have mattered the most so far, they've been, you know, whether it's 5, 4, 6, 3 and you know, and it also just goes to show, I mean, take Justice Jackson for example, who's really been honestly criticized by Justice Sotomayor for the naivete and a lot of her decisions that are not based on anything other than personal feelings. I mean, she gave a speech saying, I love being a judge because I get to, I get to, you know, let people know effectively what my feelings are on issues. I mean, talk about a departure from what judges are supposed to be doing. But that's where she's at. And it's pretty radical view.
- [29:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
What do you in the next three years, what do you think the biggest challenge for the Trump administration? I know that it's kind of amazing. I should be candid. Every time I read the news section as opposed to the opinion journalism section of the Wall Street Journal, whatever they have said, I always think that the opposite is going to happen because about the tariffs, the trade war, closing the border, you're not going to get the military recruits by. Everything he solved so far they had said was going to be a disaster. But what do you think are going to be the big controversial issues in the immediate future that this administration is going to have to look at? Is it? I was looking at the tariff revenue is going to be up. There's going to be some revenue from getting self deporting one people haven't talked about. But self deporting 1 million illegal aliens is going to really help a lot of state budgets and local budgets. But what do you see as the big challenges in the next year or two?
- [30:17]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Well, I think in the first seven months has been pretty remarkable. I mean they're effectively hitting 1,000. You had the key appointments of the cabinet, which in my view were. I spent a lot of time on the campaign trail with President Trump and a lot of the figures have relationships with that are in the cabinet now. It's basically a team of disruptors which is really, really unique. I mean, you talk about this a lot like just generally speaking, even prior Republican presidents kind of go to the same pool of applicants and they're well received in the cocktail parties of Washington, D.C. but they're not really reflective of the people that I represent. They're not really reflective of the people who listen to your show who don't feel like this thing has worked out particularly well for them. They think it's a little bit too clubby and it's about what the elites write in their white papers as opposed to what people are feeling when they're swinging the hammer at home. Right. So I think putting that team of disruptors together was huge and we got that done. I think the one big beautiful bill to get that across the finish line, even though you only needed 51 votes, was an important feat. And President Trump, I think because of his comeback, because, because of his popularity, because of his connection with America, gave everybody strength to go do it. Right. And it got done. And so you have again, we front loaded the money for not only ICE agents, border detention facilities and deportations. That's all front loaded. And the wall, by the way, so what that means is the Democrats as they negotiate on, let's say a 60 vote threshold for appropriations bills, they can't hold that stuff hostage anymore because it's already out the door. Right. That's a big deal. Same on military spending, same on the tax cuts that went, that went through, that are going to, for the average families, you know, five to $10,000 a year. Those are going to continue. So you look at all the successes and then I actually had the honor to, to handle the rescissions package, which was a very important statement for us to make, which was we're going to defund NPR and PBS. That's a billion dollars and another 8 billion on those crazy USAID projects that were so stupid that have been kind of baked into the kind of considered the Washington consensus way of doing foreign policy. And so that was another big win. So you got these wins, you got the momentum. But what you're, you know, to get to your question is what becomes the biggest part of that? I think we've got to stay resolute on this meeting. Mass migration with mass deportations, that is going to be looking for anything. I mean, they can't help themselves. They, they, you know, they fell all over themselves on an MS.13 gang member in, you know, in El Salvador. They're going to look for any kind of story to try to soften public support for it, which is sky high. I think that has to continue. I would also say that what we're seeing, it's Hard to put in context. You sort of think of when the Cold War ended. We had been living prior to that with this unified belief, and rightfully so, that we ought to be very focused on defeating Soviet communism. Right. That united even, even the Republicans and Democrats to some degree. And in that time, NATO and that defense shield and these terrible trade deals that were enacted were all meant to kind of let Europe get back on its feet, Japan get back up on its feet, so that they could kind of, you know, be strong against this threat. Well, when the Cold War ended, we never really adjusted those policies. We never really renegotiated the trade deals. We never said to Europe on their own defense, you need to step up in a much more meaningful way. That's what's happening right now. And so I feel like that's the ascending view. I consider myself an American like realist with foreign policy. That's very different than sort of neoliberal view, a neoconservative view on it. So that's the ascending point of view, I think. And you have to have a president that believes that. And so you got a vice president and a president, J.D. vance and Donald Trump. That's their view of the world. And I think we're going to have to continue to win the argument with people because that in, especially in Washington, as you know, that is not, that is not the majority view, but because of what President Trump has done in securing these peace deals and that being the North Star, he's bringing a lot more people with him. And so I think that's the long term challenges. How do we maintain this trajectory not just for the three years, but moving forward, that this really core kind of America first ideology remains and that it's, that it is, is lasting and enduring.
- [34:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's very hard to do. Even Ronald Reagan, the Reagan revolution was, was about a three year first term and then it sort of, you know, it got stalled. And then George H.W. bush was a very good guy, but he was thousand points of light, read my lips, no new taxes. And it kind of went into rhinoism, you know, at the end of his. And they never really got that back. So it's very hard to perpetuate a counter revolution against the progressive project over 12 years, maybe or six.
- [35:15]
Senator Eric Schmidt
And I'll tell you, yeah, and I'll also say, so this is my third year in the Senate, my first two years. One of the things that I was struck by was just how different the conversations were in Washington at our lunches versus what they are at home. And the biggest Example of that was on the continuing obsession by, by Democrats and some Republicans. And then of course Joe Biden on this, this never ending blank check to Ukraine. You know, it was, it was, it dominated so much, it just dominated so much of the discussion. And I told somebody one time, I literally have not had a single person in Missouri come to me and say, you know what, Eric, the most important thing I want you to do right now is I want you to vote for another $60 billion for Ukraine. It just was not a topic, but it dominated. And I think it's not to say that there aren't important foreign policy questions that should be front and center, but it was just weird. And I think now it's so different. The conversations that we're having about the policies we're pursuing are things that actually do matter to people at home. And it's like this is like making sure that they're not getting hit with the biggest tax increase in American history. Making sure that we have a secure border. One of the things I think it's, it's kind of wild that we don't even ever talk about now is border crossings. Like that problem was solved in a month.
- [36:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know it.
- [36:37]
Senator Eric Schmidt
And we were told, you know, you.
- [36:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Need new comprehensive immigration reform was the only answer.
- [36:41]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Right. And, and you just needed a president who actually wanted to enforce the law.
- [36:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think there's going to be a couple of, I don't know how to say it, but controversies within the MAGA Republican movement. I can think of one. So almost everybody I meet in the Mexican American community here thinks that the 10 to 12 million people who came illegally should be got brought back. I think they would also agree, the Trump 55%, let's say, of males who voted for him, they would also agree. If you're able bodied and you're in that prior pool, which I think is about 20 million before Biden's 12 million, that's figures. I think we have about 30 million. But that other 20 million, if you're able bodied and you're on social services, they, I think people think they should be deported. If you have a criminal record, even a dui, you should be deported. If you've only been here, let's say a year before the Biden, you should be deported. But then you get into what, everybody has asked me this question and it goes something like this. Well, I screwed up. I didn't get legality, I broke the law. I've been here nine years. I've been a roofer for nine years. I'm working 60 hours a week. I've never been on welfare. I have no criminal record. And I think, by the way, that pool is smaller than the Democrats say it is. I don't think there's a lot of people who have never been on social services. They've never had. And I think I should have to pay a fine and I don't want citizenship. I don't want to just say that I deserve. But I would like to see if I could pay a fine and get a green card. Do you think there's going to be support for that at all?
- [38:22]
Senator Eric Schmidt
I don't. I mean, I think there'll be some, but I just think that the Overton window shifted on this, as I said earlier. And I think that, you know, you listen to people and look, I. I think the frustration people have is that the people that I grew up around who, you know, they worked in factories or the cops or they were. They worked, you know, hard for a living. They got hit by this double whammy of globalism, which was they did their jobs, were shipped overseas. Okay. And then as they're shifting, like this is a big shift as they're moving at that point, then people were brought here illegally to undercut their wages for the next job.
- [38:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
- [38:59]
Senator Eric Schmidt
And so they just haven't seen the prosperity that, you know, others have seen. And there's just not an appetite, I don't think, for that kind of condoning the, the illegal activity. Because you listen to people. There is a need right now. There is a need out there for like 500, 000 electricians. Right. And. And we have to get to a place where we stop accepting this idea that Americans won't do so.
- [39:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, we only have a. We still have this stubborn 62% labor participation rate. And I don't know how. How you. You get it up to 70%.
- [39:32]
Senator Eric Schmidt
And I think. Yeah, I agree. And I think that some of the advanced manufacturing that we're just on the leading edge for is going to be a great opportunity. So in some ways, that advancement in AI and all that is going to lead. You know, the argument we've heard from chamber of commerce folks for a long time was, well, we need to be able to bring in cheap labor for jobs that won't get done. Well, you're actually not going to have as much of a need for that moving forward. Forward. If you're going to need fewer people to do it so that the factory jobs aren't going to look like they looked like in 1960, but they're going to look like something very different that I think can empower American workers.
- [40:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
You can see that's our focus. Yeah, I'm looking out the window right now. I have a 40 acre almond orchard. And when I was a kid, we all had mallets and we hit the almonds and then we had these heavy canvases and then they would fall in the canvases and then we would drag it to the next tree. And after about six tree, it was so heavy. Then we dumped them into gunny sacks and then we came by with a trailer and one person. Now three days ago, he came with this very sophisticated machine. I have about 7,000 trees. And he just, each one had a computerized, you know, he could tell by the. And it shook it. And he did the whole 40 acres in one day. And then he came back two days ago and he took, went with a blower and he blew all the almonds on the ground into a neat row in the middle. And now he's coming back and he's scooping them all up. And one man and all the things they said that could never be mechanized. You can't mechanize, you know, picking grapes and put him on the ground and dry them into raisins. That's mechanized. You cannot mechanize strawberries. How would you. And they're starting to do things to mechanize. So it. Actually, I agree with you. There's going to be a radical shift. I think one of the answers. But this is going to be a political question I think the Trump administration is going to have to face because if they're successful, and I think they will be with the self deportations, I think it's very feasible in five, four years, they can get almost all of the Biden people back. And I think they can get all of the people with criminal records that were here before the Biden people. And there's a lot of them and all the people who were just aimlessly on. So. But that other group that I talked to, I don't know what you call them, they're going to have to get a strategy or an exegesis to the public because I looked at the, I look at the polls. Yeah. And you're up to 60, 70% deport the Biden people. And then it starts when you get down to somebody that the, the left mentions all the time. And there are people like that. I just talked to a guy yesterday in the supermarket and he's been here 12 years. He's worked every day, seven days a week. He pays taxes, he's never. His kids are all legal. And he wanted to know. He said, why don't you try to help me get citizenship and why don't you talk on TV about it? And I said, have you ever. No, I've never been arrested. Are you on welfare? No, I've never been on welfare. I said, didn't you think you broke the law? Why did you come illegal? Well, I was 17 and I had. I was down in Michel Khan. So I came up, I want to pay a fine and I want to get a green card. And I said, well, do you think you should go back and come back again? And he said, well, you know, I would. If I could go back and stay for a month and then apply for a green card, I'd come back. So what I'm getting at is not so much the morality or the legality. I'm just talking now just as the pure politics for the.
- [43:09]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah, no, I get. Yeah.
- [43:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I don't know how that's something the left is waiting for.
- [43:15]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Right. Well, I think also, Victor, it's true we talked earlier about Hispanic voters trending more Republican. And I think part of that, too, is there is a great deal of sort of resentment of those who have come here legally for, like, even the example of the guy at the grocery store. Like, there are people who actually waited in line and it took them years to do it, who don't like the fact.
- [43:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, they don't.
- [43:42]
Senator Eric Schmidt
But that's.
- [43:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
But there is a subset when a guy's here and his three kids are citizens and he hasn't been back to Mexico in 20 years, and he's been all. And you've got to do something with him. Either you got to deport him or you. I don't think you want to give him a pathway to citizenship or reward that. But is there an avenue where he pays a fine and either has to go back to Mexico, but he gets back. He gets some preference to come back and get a green card or something? Because I. What I'm worried about is on the Republican side, when I go in to the store, I was. I had to get a CT scan the other day, and I talked to people And I said, 90 of the people I talked to are Hispanic. I meet people who speak perfect English. They haven't spoken Spanish in 15 years. And it's the weirdest thing in the world. They come up to me and they said, I'm illegal. I said, it can't be illegal. I see you every. Every week. I said, you speak English better than I do. He said, oh yeah, my kid's an engineer at Fresno State. And I said, well, how about your wife is. Well, she's illegal too. We came up illegally. I said, well, why did you. I said, when did you come up? Oh, I came up in 1987. So I said, you've been here working? Yeah, my wife works for the state, she's illegal. So. And they, I said, well, do you want people. I've had this conversation, I can memorize. Do you want people to be deployed? Yes, they have to be deported under Biden. All of the people, all the drunk drivers, all the people who leave the scene of the accident, that's really, that's really a problem here. Rural people hitting somebody who are illegal and leaving the scene of accident. But then I said, so how many are you? Well, there's a few of us around, but we want to get a green card and then we could do what we want. Whether we get citizenship, I don't know. I think the Republicans are going to have to find something square that circle of not offending the base because it will offend their base to give a solution and then try to figure that out.
- [45:53]
Senator Eric Schmidt
It feels so much far down the line though.
- [45:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
It is. You know what I mean?
- [45:57]
Senator Eric Schmidt
But hey, by the way, I have to ask you. So I hear all these reports of trap. What is the. Is the congestion better in California? Are these rumors true that because of a lot of the self deportations and all that, that the congestion, the traffic in Southern California is a lot better than it was six months ago?
- [46:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I drive 205 miles from I'm here in the center of Fresno county to Stanford and I would say on the part that's in the San Joaquin Valley, it's better. But it. To answer your question, the Fresno B is a McClatchy paper. So it's very left wing, believe it or not, in this conservative Sacramento, Modesto and Fresno B and there's not much left of them anymore. They've been decimated. They used to be huge conglomerates of. And they're just, they're kind of like an online magazine that nobody reads. But they've been running articles lamenting that the emergency rooms are too, they're too sparse now. There's not enough people. So when you go into it, when you go into an emergency room, instead of waiting six hours and not seeing anybody there who doesn't, who speaks English. I had a bee sting. I didn't know I was allergic. I suddenly got allergic. I, you know, they brought me in unconscious a Few years ago, three years ago. And not one person in the local spoke English and there's about 50 people waiting. And the bee was running a story recently that said this is terrible that the, that the emergency rooms are thinning out and you get access because that means that there's a lot of illegals in the community that haven't yet left and they don't have access, but they don't want to go into the emergency room. But they never made the connection. Well, maybe that's good for Mexican American citizens who are poor and want to use it now they can finally get it.
- [47:47]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Maybe the hospitals bought advertising and they wrote it because the hospitals make a lot of money on.
- [47:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
They do, they do. And I. The biggest problem we have out here in rural center is about half of all accidents. The driver leaves the scene of the accident.
- [48:05]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah.
- [48:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
So and they hit and they've killed. I mean, every day. And I think in the last 20 years, five people have run off the road at high speed drunk and taken out trees on my place. And when they, they zoom in, they usually, depending on the age of the orchard, they'll take out 10 or 12 trees which actually you, you lose that production for three to five years and then they leave the car and, and they run off. They're usually not hurt. And then their car is there. And one time I pulled it out with a tractor, chained it. They wouldn't let me do it. The pirate patrolman said, you can't. And then they just leave and then they impound the car. Then they mysteriously show up and get the car back and there's no compensation for anybody. And that's a big problem because if you're bringing millions of people from Micho Khan or Oaxaca and they haven't driven very well and they have these high powered Americans cars and they don't know the driver and you give them, you know, basically exemption. The people they're killing and hurting are mostly Mexican in this community or Mexican American citizens. And that's one of the reasons why people were so angry and that vote helped Trump so much. We're going to be right back with our last break. I'm talking to Senator Eric Schmidt. He's got a new book, the Last Line of Defense, how to Beat the Left in Court. You can buy it Amazon bookstores on the 19th of August. Yeah, so.
- [49:35]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Right.
- [49:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
We'll be right back. And we're back for our last session. You mentioned Ukraine. What do you see there? Because one thing about Biden, he always said we're going to, we're going to give money and aid as long as it takes. But they never told us what long was it. Is it Trump is going to tell Putin? Well, nobody has the military wherewithal to get back Crimea or the Donbass, and they're surely not going to be in NATO. And you are about 80 to 100 miles east, excuse me, west of the old border. And we're going to negotiate that. And is that what the critical point is, where the DMZ will be?
- [50:27]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah, I think you mentioned where we were even a year ago. You had a wandering foreign policy. There was no core American interest articulated other than these nebulous things about defending democracy and all that. And so I think where we're at now is. And by the way, no plan, just more money, and that is no way to run a railroad. And I think the European allies never took Biden seriously on any kind of, like, commitments on their own defense or if you, if you really believe that, that Russia is a, you know, Putin, even though he can't get to Kiev, is about to roll through Europe like Hitler. Wouldn't you be doing a little bit more than you're doing right now? And that message was never delivered. So I think President Trump is the only person literally on the planet who can bring about peace. And I think that's, that's the goal. That's his North Star. This is the truth of the matter is, if you're a realist, you understand this is just a meat grinder. You know, a million people or more have lost their lives and, and thousands more every week by just sort of this kind of effective stalemate that exists. But Russia, and look, this is sort of the Russian way. The wars of attrition are kind of their thing, and they've been doing that for a very, very long time. So I think it's in, in, in all of their interest to get to a peace deal. And again, I think Trump can kind of break through. And you're probably, yeah, you're probably talking about what, what lands. I mean, I don't think anybody really believes that Crimea is, is going back. Right. That was, I don't think so. And you had, of course, the two times Russia did move was when Obama was president with Crimea and then, of course, when Biden was president. So Trump has always been right about this, that I don't think there would have been a movement move if he were, you know, been president in time that Biden was. So I think that's where this is all headed. I think you look at the string of victories, I mean, just even things that, you know, the American public's probably not, you know, Azerbaijan and Armenia, these sorts of like, struggles that have gone on for a very long time. Even in Southeast Asia. He's, he's brokering peace. And I think that's going to be one of his great legacies. And I think he's committed to trying this. It doesn't mean it's going to work, but it also doesn't mean that we're ever, we're certainly never going to commit troops. And I just don't think this endless funding stream from the American taxpayer is on the table anymore either. So I think there's enough and I, but I do think President Trump is, he's doing everything he can right now to galvanize as much through economic sanctions and other things or threats of those to bring everybody to the table. And that's what, that's what he should be doing.
- [52:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
Let me ask the last question. We're with Senator Eric Schmidt and we're talking about the Last Line of Defense, his new book on how the right and the conservatives, we conservatives can use the law to stymie the abuse of the law. And Victor, I would say, I would.
- [53:17]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Say too, I was so excited when you, when you had me on to talk about the book because I just, the things that you talk about, you know, we, in the book, it's chronicled. We took the deposition of Anthony Fauci and there's some really interesting stories there. We took the definite or the deposition of Elvis Chan, who was the FBI guy.
- [53:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
And so I remember him who was.
- [53:38]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Pre bunking the Hunter Biden laptop story. They knew it was real. They were telling them it was going to be Russian hack and leak operation. We took the deposition of somebody at cisa, which was this agency for cybersecurity that was basically working to censor Americans with big tech companies. So is the cdc. I mean, there's some crazy stuff that went on in that time period and we were, you know, kind of on the front lines. I just think your, your audience really is going to like this book.
- [54:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think so. I think so, too. I was going to ask you about Anthony Fauci. You know, everybody kind of poo pooed the pardon, but if he hadn't got a pardon, all those exchanges with Francis Collins about oh yeah, gain of function and then Peter Dasak and routing the 600,000 around the law that said it was illegal.
- [54:29]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah. To the Eco Health Alliance.
- [54:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. And we had Stephen Quay, a biologist on and he was saying, victor, Victor, Victor, the 600,000 wasn't the worst of it. They were green lighting doctors and their instrumentation and that expertise to be channeled into Wuhan as well. But when you guys had him on, I didn't realize when you, when you looked at what he was emailing, he had a lot of criminal exposure had he not been pardoned.
- [55:01]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Well, we'll see. By the way. We'll see. I'm kind of leading the Senate investigation this. If those pardons hold up. Because if he did not have knowledge of the specific pardons through auto pin, there's a very important legal question whether or not those pardons are valid or not. So we'll see. But yeah, look, he's very, he's got a lot of exposure. What's really interesting from that deposition that came to light, we spent a lot of time on. And by the way, my Solicitor General, John Sauer, when I was Missouri ag, he's now the Solicitor General for the country. So we've got people and the first four district court judges that President Trump put up or happened to be in Missouri, and they all worked with me in the Attorney General's office. So we're kind of, we're, we're, we're flooding the zone.
- [55:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
What percentage you think were auto pin pardons? Do you. Anybody have a. Yes.
- [55:41]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Well, I mean, there's already been some disclosures that, that at the end of the day, when they got into the like massive number.
- [55:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
- [55:49]
Senator Eric Schmidt
That he was approving, whatever that means. Classifications of pardons. Right. Like not an individual murderer, but a classification. So if that's true. But I don't think that those are valid.
- [56:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Can you tell by the auto pin, Is there a dozen?
- [56:07]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Actually, we, we have requested from the archives and guess. You'll never guess who they are. The archivist for the United States is right now. Marco Rubio is technically the archivist. So we've asked Marco Rubio to release the sort of the documents. There should be authorizations for these auto pins. Every time it was used, there should be some sort of paperwork or a receipt for it. So that's what we've asked for. We hope to get that in the next month to kind of dig a little bit deeper into the auto.
- [56:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
Did any. Are you guys have any plans to, to depose Mark Milley about his phone call to his Chinese counterpart?
- [56:42]
Senator Eric Schmidt
I mean, that isn't a while. Yeah. You just sort of like if you were to take the names out and you were to write a book about all the sinister stuff that was happening and then, you know, Russia gave. We could spend a whole nother episode on this. But you would think that was in some other country. Not.
- [56:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
I would. I'm writing this book on the comeback of Trump chapter called Nietzsche and Trump. Everything they tried to do to kill him made him stronger. Yeah, destroying. But I went through all those. I could not believe some of this stuff.
- [57:11]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Well, we took Fauci's deposition. He came in and, you know, one interesting anecdote that we note in the last line of defense is that a court reporter about halfway through sneezed and he looked at her and asked her if she had an upper respiratory infection and requested she wear a mask. And the court report, I mean, this is in November of 2022. This is not like March of 2020. So this guy, and, and he sent his chief deputy early on in like March or April of 2020 to kind of look and see what the, the Chinese communists were doing. And this guy, his chief deputy came back raving about the lockdowns. And so immediately Fauci was a big proponent of this and really undermined President Trump. He emailed a friend of his who asked early on, hey, do I really, you know, should I wear a mask on an airplane? And he said, no, of course not. Masks are not affecting. And then of course he tells the country, everybody needs to wear a mask.
- [58:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
Including five years and two at that.
- [58:06]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Point, double mask for kids. It was just totally insane. But, but I think, you know, it. The. The level of sensitivity this guy had because, you know, he proclaimed to be the science. The CDC was very protective of him. And if there was criticism of him or there was criticism about the vaccine in any way or mass. I mean, they were working with the biggest companies in the history of the. The world to shut you down. I mean, RFK Jr. Was one of the first to be censored.
- [58:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
Jay Bacharia.
- [58:35]
Senator Eric Schmidt
They went after him, by the way, J. Dr. Bacharia was one of the plaintiffs in Missouri versus Biden.
- [58:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I forgot about that. He was. Yes, he was.
- [58:43]
Senator Eric Schmidt
And one of the great ironies that I. And this actually isn't in the book, but I was holding a hearing on censorship on the Judiciary Committee. I was chairing the subcommittee, the doing it, and I had to leave to go vote on Dr. Bhattacharya's confirmation to be the director of NIH. And there was a certain amount of historical symmetry to it that the people, me included, who were fighting against this censorship, Dr. J. Bhattachary was a victim of the censorship, were now inside the Castle, Right.
- [59:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
- [59:14]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Trying to reform it from within.
- [59:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
He really went, he's a colleague of mine at the Hoover. He went to hell at Stanford University. They went after him. And Scott Atlas. Scott Atlas, another wonderful, powerful person. And they went after him.
- [59:26]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Well, and think about, remember what their great sin was in the Great Barrington Declaration. What they said was, is that natural, natural immunity is actually still a thing. And they almost lost their careers over it because it's crazy.
- [59:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know. Last thing I'll say. One of the things I noticed when I was doing it, and you've mentioned a lot of the stuff about the law fair, I didn't realize, I think Jim Jordan has it in his report, but I went back and looked. So Trump, on November 15th of 2022, he announces he's going to run. Three days later, Joe Biden does three things he appoints on the same day. Jack Smith. Yep. The same day Fanny Willis's paramour, Nathan Wade is in the White House with the White House counsel that very day. And the same day, Michael Co Angelo, number three in the doj, leaves that day to go work for Alvin Bragg. And he had rotated into the DOJ from working with Letita Jane. That was all the same day.
- [60:31]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Yes.
- [60:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
They had to coordinate that. They had to be doing all of that local, state and federal. And I don't know that that's going to be. It's funny because all of those people have, almost all of them have criminal exposure. You see anything that's going to. These are all, I guess, state and local.
- [60:48]
Senator Eric Schmidt
No, I do, I think. And there should be, I think, you know, we could talk a little bit more. I think there's actually an avenue for this Russia gate for their indictments. And it would probably center around a conspiracy because it's ongoing. Because the biggest challenge you have, a lot of this stuff is the statute of limitations. But a conspiracy to defraud the United States of America, that's ongoing, that doesn't run the clock, isn't over on that. So I think that Brennan Clapper, Comey have real, real risk here. So if they haven't already hired lawyers, they probably should lawyer up. But yeah, I've talked about this, too. I think what really is crazy about all this was they thought, and one of the reasons they pushed this January 6th thing and MAGA extremism so hard, they were really trying in the censorship, they were really trying to bury the movement and President Trump to marginalize him in a way that he couldn't come back when they realized that had failed, that he was coming back and I was one of the early endorsers. I may have been President Trump's first Senate endorsement, first or second. I understood the connection this man had with the country and real people. And I thought all along that there was a path for him to win.
- [61:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
And thank God I went back and looked at each one of. I went back and looked at the Mar A Lago raid brag, James E. Jean Carroll, Jack Smith, the 25 states that tried to get him off the ballot.
- [62:09]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah.
- [62:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
Think about every time that happened. He went up at one point. I don't know if the polls were right, right after January 6th. Ron DeSantis was ahead of him in the polls when that started. And the way he was defiant and every time he was in New York, he was going to these little markets and talking to people, and he was just on. He went up one to two points each time. And within a year, he, he was back. You know, people just got outraged at what they were doing.
- [62:39]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Yeah. And I, and I start the, I start the book last night. Offense by the line is In November of 2024, the fever broke. And, and that is the best way, I think, to describe it. This, this fever dream we had with wokeness and lawfare and all this. The American people, thankfully, in their wisdom, sat in their own jury box and they saw all this play out and they rendered their own verdict and they said, we don't want our country to become some third world banana republic. No, that's ushered in.
- [63:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
So I, I think what it was is it was kind of like the emperor has no clothes. I knew the emperor, all DEI and ESG was all done with, but it really took someone to say the emperor was naked and that was Trump, because I don't think, I don't see a traditional, I mean, I'm not speaking ill of them, but a John McCain type or Romney type or ball. I don't think they would have done it. Gone out on a limb and just said, di is over with. And.
- [63:32]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Well, and I also think. Yeah, and I also think one of the great gifts and legacies President Trump has given all of us and, and I tried to articulate this in the book about the courage to stand up and fight.
- [63:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
He did.
- [63:44]
Senator Eric Schmidt
That's a, that is a new tenant of our party now. And I wouldn't, don't. I wouldn't say that that was always the case, but I know I got a lot of resolve from that. And I found myself in situations when I was suing 64 school districts on the peak day of Omicron for their mask mandates. Not everybody agreed with that decision to do that, but it was the right thing to do. And I think by President Trump withstanding all of that and coming back victorious also provides a path. Right. Is that the way we're successful is. People want to know. I think the most important thing with leadership is people want to authentic. They want to know you're authentically fighting for them. And people can spot a phony. I think they're.
- [64:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
I, I think they hadn't won well, they lost seven out of the last eight popular votes at the national level. And I think part of the problem was they want. It was kind of like they played by the Marcus of Queensberry rules, and they thought winning nobly was better than losing, like in a knife fight or a bruising fight. You just don't do that if you're Republican. And it would, you know, you get. It's kind of like, well, we got 46%, we got close, and we ran a really great. I'm Mitt Romney, and they said all these horrible things about me. You know, I took people over the cliff and I hazed somebody in high school. I put a dog on my thing, but I did not reply to that. And therefore, I'm noble, and I lost nobly. And that's who we're going to be, a noble minority party. And Trump came along and said, no, we're going to win, and we're going to win. We might have to win ugly in your interpretation, but we're going to win.
- [65:17]
Senator Eric Schmidt
And that was something, by the way, if you believe that all these things are on the line for our country, I think we have a moral obligation to fight.
- [65:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's a very good point, because he was basically telling somebody, you know, they call you deplorable, they call you dregs, but I am your. I am your redemption, you know, and what he was saying is that if you're a national leader and you're worried about your comportment or whether people like you in Georgetown, then you're letting somebody down.
- [65:47]
Senator Eric Schmidt
I, I said, when I was running for the Senate and I had, of course, my history as Attorney general is leading the charge on all these fights, I said, listen, I'm not interested in being invited to all the fancy cocktail parties in Washington. That's not why I'm running. I'm running because I think our. The heart and soul of our country is at stake. And I really believe that.
- [66:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I do, too.
- [66:06]
Senator Eric Schmidt
That fight doesn't end. And I think even. And even now just because, because President Trump is in office and we've got control, the forces are still coming. The forces are still coming. And again, one of the reasons why I felt compelled to write the book was to say we have a playbook now in the Article 3 branch too, like we're not going to limit this battlefield to just the elections. We're not going to limit the battlefield to the administrative reform that needs to happen to dismantle the administrative state. We got to fight on turf that has traditionally been considered Democrat turf. If we really are serious about holding on to this republic, you can see.
- [66:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
That in action that the less traditional power they have and this time Donald Trump is saying, I'm not just going to go after the symptoms, I'm going to go after the source of their power. Npr, pbs, the universities, they're going to get very angry. I mean, when they're hitting watermelons with malice, these potty mouth videos, hike and Jeffries posing with a bat, I think.
- [67:00]
Senator Eric Schmidt
I call it fake authenticity. Like they're faking the authenticity and people see through it. And I actually don't think they've hit Victor. I don't think they've hit rock bottom yet.
- [67:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, I don't think. I don't.
- [67:09]
Senator Eric Schmidt
They don't really get it yet. They had some self reflection for 60 days, but they're back at the same thing, which is I see it in the Senate with some senators who are going to run for president. They think they just being the chief resistor is the path and it's not American people objected. They don't get it. They're so consumed by Trump derangement syndrome, they haven't figured it out yet and.
- [67:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Let'S hope they don't. We come to the end of our time. Last line of defense, how to beat the left in court. Senator Eric Ship, Shem Schmidt, excuse me, from Missouri. And it's a great book. And if you don't think the Republicans know how to fight fire with fire and the lawfare, then read this book because it'll be, it'll be very encouraging. It goes through a lot of things that we and I didn't realize, but they're, they're there cause for hope and that we are sophisticated on the conservative side just as much as or more so than the Democrats. Thank you very much, Senator, for spending time with us.
- [68:08]
Senator Eric Schmidt
Thank you. Thanks for Davis.
- [68:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, Victor Davis Hansen for the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Thank you.