Senator Eric Schmitt
speaker
478 appearances
21 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Jun 2025
Senator Eric Schmitt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah, no, no. I mean, and also with space. China's, you know, they're coming in a real way, and that's a strategic location for sort of the next frontier. I mean, whoever controls, you know, China might declare the moon entirely theirs, whoever gets to Mars first. So this isn't science fiction stuff. This is part of securing America's future. So I think it's important.
Yeah, so Pete Hexteth will be in front of the Armed Services Committee, which I serve on Tuesday. And I think that's right. I think that as much as they try to ratchet up some sort of outrage, as they always do, Pete's the right guy for the job. And I think you look at the consistent theme of all the picks that President Trump has picked.
with the view that he ran, you know, as much as it was R&D, it was disruptor versus establishment. And all of these picks are coming in as reformers. And we need that at the Pentagon. And so what I've talked to Pete about, and I think what he's committed to doing is, first and foremost, getting rid of DEI immediately. We've been able to make some gains in recent years. But this is divisive.
It has no place in our military. We shouldn't be dividing the room by oppressor and oppressed. We need to have the most lethal fighting force in the world, and that's the goal. So I think he's going to do that, a real focus on China, and then also procurement reform. I mean, we've got to be able to do things better and more efficiently than we're doing right now.
And I think Pete's going to come in there and have a cultural shift. He's also... A warfighter is warfighter, right? Like this guy served. I think he's going to command respect.
And don't underestimate the ability for us to recruit when they see somebody like Pete Hexeth leading the Pentagon as opposed to somebody like Lloyd Austin, who famously was wearing the mask in the Philippines during COVID.
Yeah. So we were you know, the new Congress has sworn in. And so the president takes the oath of office on January 20th in 10 days. Can't come soon enough. But we're we're in session. So we got committees organized this week. It was our first week back.
And so we're trying to line up these confirmation hearings as fast as we can and try to get some of them done by confirmation day or, you know, January 20th for President Trump so he can get moving. So I think the Senate's pretty committed to moving these confirmations quickly. We've got Pete Hegseth on Tuesday and Pam Bondi will be on Wednesday. So I'm also on the Judiciary Committee.
We'll be hearing from Pam on Wednesday. And she's a slam dunk pick. I mean, I know Pam from the state AG world. She is tough as nails. She's serious. She's a reformer. She's going to come into DOJ.
An agency, of course, as everyone watching knows, has been weaponized against political opponents, been weaponized against Catholics, been weaponized against parents who showed up to school board meetings. During covid, I mean, it's totally lost its way. She's going to restore credibility and get it back to its core mission of taking on violent crime.
And we've got a lot of that to take on in cities across the country.
Well, you know, I was I was down in Mar-a-Lago the week before we came back and got to spend some time with him. And even there, man, he's just ready to roll like he loves America. You know this. He's ready to go. And And he's picking his team and we want to get his team on the field as quickly as possible.
But he came in, he was on Capitol Hill on, I guess that was Wednesday, came to our Senate conference. I know he's meeting with a lot of House members this weekend at Mar-a-Lago, but he understands, and I certainly understand, I think my colleagues understand, part of the important thing of leadership is understanding the moment that you're in, right? We have a very unique opportunity
with him winning the mandate, having control of the House and the Senate, to actually deliver for the American people. And we can't squander a day. So we're talking about these confirmations to get his team on the field and have reform on the inside. That's important. But also, as we look to securing the border, as we look to being energy dominant, as we look to restoring our place in the world,
having an economy that works for working families. So it's going to be busy. So if you think about it, the Senate has the confirmation duty. We're going to be doing all that. We're going to be working on that. We're also going to be working with CRAs to overturn some late rules that Joe Biden put into place. The kind of Trump proof will be doing that.
And then working on this reconciliation package. My view is I want to get some wins on the board as quickly as possible for President Trump. I don't want to squander wins. anytime, including the first 100 days. So, you know, we're having an internal discussion. Is that one bill? Is that two bills?
So if you think about this, because we have both chambers, we have the ability to move forward what's called reconciliation, meaning if it's dealing with these budget issues and budget savings. We in the Senate, we don't need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. We just need 51 votes and we've got 53 votes.
So reconciliation provides us a great opportunity to not have to rely on Democrats for any votes on the big ticket items that we want to get done. And so the question then is that the House is sort of, hey, we want to do one bill. And I'm sympathetic in the sense that these are well-meaning folks who have a very, very slim majority vote. We have a slightly bigger majority in the Senate.
But my issue is, I think you look at what, you know, spent a lot of time with President Trump on the trail as you did. He was very consistent about securing the border, being energy dominant, all those things. I just want to make sure we get some wins on the board early. I don't want to squander time. That time period where people are, you know, November wasn't that far in the rearview mirror.
People understand what that election was all about. We can go do it. And then you've got the issues that, you know, the tax cuts from 2017 are set to expire at the end of 2025, right? So we've got all year to make sure that gets done. What I don't want to see, and my concern is with one bill, is that we get to March and we haven't done any of these big ticket items.
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