Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s (CPAC) 2023 conference in Washington, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) warned that the United States is at a crossroads and that government overreach and media control represent the biggest threats to Americans’ freedoms.
Schmitt took issue with President Joe Biden’s spending, which he said has crushed Americans. He also criticized investment companies that use ESG (environmental, social, and governance) to hold retirement captive to virtue signaling.
Another point of concern raised by the senator was China is “rattling its saber” and preparing for war. The senator asserted that Biden is disadvantaging the United States by allowing the nation’s spy balloons to fly over Missouri.
Schmitt reminded listeners that he was elected to represent the people of Missouri and promised to work to make the state energy-dominant again.
However, he warned that the biggest threat to Americans’ freedoms lies in the administrative state, which he called a threat to livelihood. Schmitt argued that unelected officials have unparalleled governance over people’s lives, and no one ever told them they could be in control.
The senator claimed that those on the left want to go so far as to “regulate a dry creek bed or drainage because of climate change, and they want to control the information people receive through the media to control them.”
Suing the Biden Administration
Schmitt did not shy away from touting his actions as the attorney general in his home state, where he filed Missouri v. Biden, suing the Biden administration and other agencies for colluding with social media giants to censor people on social media.
According to Schmitt, during the course of that case, they found direct, blatant, and brazen cooperation between the government and social media.
He said that government agencies had special portals to report posts they disagreed with, and prominent figures like Tucker Carlson and former President Donald Trump were in their crosshairs.
Schmitt also criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci for what he promoted as the responsible way to ward off COVID-19. The lawmaker claimed that when Fauci was privately messaged, he said masks were ineffective, even though he pushed for requirements that people wear them on planes and that kids had to wear masks in schools.
Schmitt warned, “When Fauci speaks, Big Tech censored, and this can never happen again, and not on my watch.”
The Missouri lawmaker also touched on government agencies meeting with social media companies regularly, telling them that misinformation could be anything, priming them to censor the Hunter Biden laptop.
“If they can ban [former President Donald Trump] the president of the United States, imagine what they can do to you and I,” Schmitt said, driving home his point about the dangers of government and Big-Tech censorship.
The Senate Republican said that if anyone can censor the flow of information, they can control people, which is the left’s goal in working with tech companies.
Schmitt, who claims to be the first AG in the country to stand up against OSHA’s vaccine mandate, which he won at the Supreme Court, was one of the leaders to push back against “COVID tyranny.”
He also promised to be “one of the leading senators in the country to fundamentally dismantle the administrative state. We’re going to pry power and control away from elected bureaucrats and return it to We The People.”
Schmitt believes that the people alone should have the freedom to decide what’s best for their families, not unelected bureaucrats that work for an agency they may never have heard of.
The lawmaker vowed to work to “claw power away from the government” and give it back to the people: “I don’t know about you, but I’m here, and I’m ready to lead that fight … I won’t be silenced. I won’t be intimidated; this is the fight. Let’s win this together.”
