CLAY: We’ve got the newest senator from Missouri, Eric Schmitt, with us, who I believe just came from a classified briefing about the Chinese spy balloon. I presume he can’t tell us a lot about that. But Senator Schmitt, do you think this was a one-time incursion across the length of our country? Do you think the government should change its policy as it pertains to these Chinese spy balloons? Not asking you to tell us what you were briefed on, but just the larger context here.

SEN. SCHMITT: Yeah, I think, you know, there’s a few things to take from this. One is, this is an incredibly brazen move by the Chinese here to actually have a spy balloon. And it sounds, I mean, it sounds ridiculous to even say a Chinese spy balloon, right, traversing over the continental United States, including places like nuclear missile silos. And in Missouri, Whiteman Air Force Base, which is the home of the B-2 stealth bomber, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency in the St. Louis area. I mean, they were this wasn’t just a drift, right? They knew exactly what they were doing.

I think they were also, in addition to the intelligence that they were gathering as this took place, they were also gathering really important intelligence on Joe Biden in how he reacts to these kinds of situations. And that is very concerning to me, because there’s just no way this should happen. This thing should have been shot down, you know, over the Aleutian Islands well before there was any concern about shooting it down, you know, near a populated area, which obviously is a big concern. So, there’s just a number of failures here, Clay, that just is incredibly troubling. My hope here is that I think this is how the American people feel about this.

There is a renewed desire, I hope, to really view China for what it is, which is our chief adversary. We are in a competition with them. They’re being very aggressive. This was just the most recent attempt of those sort of aggressive moves. And this is coming on the heels of a president that withdrew from Afghanistan, looked weak on the world stage. You know, servicemen died, tens of billions-of-dollars’ worth of equipment is left behind and refuses do anything to secure our southern border. And now we have obviously an incursion into U.S. airspace. So, these are serious issues, right? And they’re coming to light. But we better come together on this and have a renewed focus on China.

CLAY: So, do you think China is setting it up to invade Taiwan? And if so, would they be more encouraged to invade Taiwan based on the fact that we just let them fly a spy balloon across the entire country and really didn’t do anything? In other words, our response, I think it’s fair to say, was quite weak.

SEN. SCHMITT: It’s I mean, it’s hard to believe that they’re somehow, you know, more concerned about our response after this than they were before. I mean, I just don’t think anybody with a half a brain would believe that they’re somehow more intimidated by how the United States reacts to these kinds of situations. I think they have a number of ways that they’d like to get Taiwan back under their control. One is to try to affect some of the elections that are coming up.

But obviously, this is a concern. I mean, they believe it’s part of China and Taiwan is an independent state. So, this is, I mean, all setting up for, you know, this to be a big focus for the United States and for the world. And so, I just think it’s very concerning. I think it’s hard to overstate how bold this was, right, to have a spy balloon floating over critical military installations in the continental United States, the lower 48. It’s pretty shocking and Joe Biden, you know, failed every single one of the tests that were presented him here.

CLAY: Yeah, there’s no doubt about that. And I think, as you rightly said, I mean, we said it on the radio as soon as it became clear that it was in our territory. I don’t understand how the immediate response wasn’t to shoot it down, particularly because many of the states it was flying over had ample space where there was no, you know, massive population center that was potentially going to be threatened or even a population center, hardly at all. Certainly, in Alaska, as you mentioned. When you hear some of these stories, it appears the Biden administration was kind of hoping nobody would notice this spy balloon, right?

Working families are hurting & deserved more than Biden’s out of touch, disconnected, tone-deaf speech last night

Families are paying 10k/yr more for everything than just two years ago

Let’s be energy dominant, stop reckless spending & secure our border https://t.co/LDEwAMgVLt

— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) February 8, 2023

And only because it became visible to the naked eye in Montana, did this story even start to go into circulation. There’s now also a report out there from, I believe, the London Times that the Biden administration might have been involved in sabotaging one of the pipelines, Nord, over in Europe. Are you concerned, and I know that happened the explosion in the European pipeline happened before you got into the Senate, but are you concerned about the transparency that is being provided to politicians, both Democrats and Republicans right now by the Biden administration?

SEN. SCHMITT: Yes, on every issue that you just mentioned there, Clay. This is a big concern and this comes to, you know, the constitutional duty for oversight by the Article 1 branch, the legislature, right? The Congress is supposed to have oversight. I mean, just a couple of weeks ago, the bipartisan Select Committee on Intelligence, Republicans and Democrats were stonewalled by folks in that committee about what, you know, sort of what they’re discovering through these top-secret documents that are being uncovered in every residence that Joe Biden’s ever had for the last 50 years, right?

That’s not how this is supposed to work. And I do think it speaks to a larger issue that you and I have talked about before, Clay. We have to be laser-like focus. I would hope this isn’t just a partisan issue. It shouldn’t be. But for me, it’s a focus as I enter the Senate here and I’m going to be like a bulldog on this. We have to fundamentally dismantle the administrative state. It is antithetical to who we are as a country. Self-government, where you could send people there, send them home, send them back. It’s all based on the idea that somebody is accountable. We have reached a point now where so many of these bureaucrats were unelected and unaccountable to anybody, make these decisions and don’t feel like they have to answer for them.

And this really hurts the American people. It’s how you get the 87,000 IRS agents, how you get to a place where some unelected guy from the EPA is telling you got to shut down your farm. It’s how you end up with ESG, which is going to do the same thing. It’s going to cut off domestic energy supply. All these folks have been emboldened. You can’t vote for them. We’ve got to get to a place where Congress is voting on this stuff, you know, because none of this stuff would actually ever happen. If they want to propose a new rule, pull back ten or whatever the number is. We’ve got to have structural reform here because that is the underlying issue for all of this.

When I was AG of Missouri, I filed the landmark Missouri v. Biden lawsuit that exposed how the federal government colluded with social media giants to censor freedom of speech. Glad to see @Jim_Jordan and @JudiciaryGOP continuing this important fight. https://t.co/KwXpsM441Y

— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) February 9, 2023

CLAY: We’re talking to Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt. You’ve been very instrumental in being involved in the Big Tech collusion and the rig job that’s been going on associated with censorship and allowing a true marketplace of ideas to exist. I know, I’m sure, you paid attention some to the House hearing on Twitter and the New York Post story and everything else. And certainly, you’ve been involved in lawsuits that have helped to uncover many of these documents. I was just talking to start off the second hour of the program here, about as much attention as we should give to Twitter and Facebook. Facebook, by the way, has now allowed Donald Trump to be back on Facebook. They’ve given him back his account. That report coming down about 15 minutes ago.

Shouldn’t we be focused most of all on who inside of the FBI was making the decision to brief these Big Tech companies on the possibility of Hunter Biden laptop Russian misinformation when we know the FBI had the laptop and knew it was real? In other words, it’s good to focus on Twitter and Facebook. And there’s certainly massive censorship there. But somebody inside of our own government at the FBI would have had the optics on the laptop and also on the fact that all of these, you know, briefings were going on for Big Tech. Somebody knew that the FBI was falsely briefing Big Tech, arguing that it was Russian disinformation when the laptop was 100% real. Shouldn’t we know who that was or what group of people that was considering they are actually the puppet masters here?

SEN. SCHMITT: Absolutely. And, you know, in the lawsuit when I was attorney general, we filed the Missouri versus Biden lawsuit last May, and we took the deposition of Anthony Fauci. And in addition to him having the court reporter put a mask on when she sneezed, I’m not making that up. That actually happened. You know, two and a half years later, that happened. But in addition to that, it became very clear, whatever Fauci said, Big Tech censored. But we also, Clay, took the deposition of Elvis Chan, who is right in the middle of all of this, and he was the FBI agent in Northern California briefing these Big Tech platforms, some of the biggest companies in the history of the world, with that immense power that they have, knowing that they had the laptop in December of late 2019.

CLAY: Do we know that? I guess that’s my question. Do we know that he was aware of all of the details on that laptop?

SEN. SCHMITT: Well, I don’t know about, you know, exact details, but certainly the FBI had the laptop, right? And —

CLAY: Yeah, yeah, that’s what I’m saying. It could have been his boss, Eric, who was saying.

SEN. SCHMITT: Like, this is, yes, Clay, we definitely need to go further. I’m not suggesting at all that it was Elvis Chan. We need that… and by the way, when people, you know, on the left complain about these sorts of hearings, this is exactly what Congress they can walk and chew gum and pass meaningful legislation for working families. We should do that also. But also, a very important function is to hold these people accountable because there’s more than just one FBI agent. They made a conscious decision to tell people, you know, that they knew wasn’t true, that this was accurate. There was a Hunter Biden laptop and then telling people, “Look out for this. This is going to be Russian disinformation.”

You’ve got the Twitter guys saying they referenced specifically the Hunter Biden laptop. That is the tip of the iceberg. They were having weekly censorship meetings. They had a special portal. So, yes, we need to get not just at the Big Tech companies, we need to get at the government folks who were involved in this who think it’s their job to tell the American people what they can think and what they can hear and what they can say. So, the Ministry of Truth, you know, this effort, we got to unravel all of it, because that’s the kind of reform I think the American people expect if they believe in the First Amendment. And I do.

CLAY: Surely there’s a puppet master somewhere in the FBI who knew that laptop was real and may well have been telling these FBI agents, “You still need to be going and having all these Big Tech briefings.” How was that decision made? Who made it? That, to me is the essence of the question that I think we need to know the answer to the most. Much less serious. I am out in Phoenix. You now represent Missouri. I am betting on the Kansas City Chiefs to win this Super Bowl, which I imagine would make you happy. What do you expect to see? And given the fact that you probably want to be reelected in Missouri, how much are the Chiefs going to beat the Eagles by?

SEN. SCHMITT: I’m going to say by a touchdown. I just think the offense is too potent. I mean, Mahomes is so creative. He can be a bunch of different ways. Now, obviously, Philadelphia’s got a quarterback that can do the same thing, but Mahomes is seasoned. This is not his first rodeo. They’ve got a lot of weapons. And I think that defense steps up and the Philadelphia defense is good. But I think this is the Chiefs here. They’ve just proven they’ve been very consistent with their offensive production. I don’t see any real reason why that’s going to slow down in the Super Bowl. So, you’re a smart man. I’ve always believed you’re a smart man and it’s a good bet.

CLAY: Hey, if I get Mahomes plus the points, I’m taking him every time. He’s the best quarterback in the NFL. Chiefs’ fans are lucky to have him, and I think they’re lucky to have you as one of their senators from Missouri. Congratulations on the election. Appreciate you making the time for us.

SEN. SCHMITT: Any time, my friend. Take care.