Senator Schmitt Defends Trump Admin’s Anti-Narcoterrorist Campaign

Praises President Trump, Secretary Hegseth's Leadership

ST. LOUIS, MO - Today, Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos to praise the Trump administration's campaign against Venezuelan narcoterrorists poisoning Americans and defend Secretary Hegseth's leadership at the Department of War.

Watch the full interview HERE

Senator Schmitt on Trump Admin Combatting Narcoterrorists:

"[…] What's telling here is to try to imply that somehow President Trump is soft on drug smuggling is just ridiculous. It's totally ridiculous. He's provided border security like we've never seen before. The fact is these cartels now - because the southern border is closed - have gone to the high seas. President Trump is acting with his core Article II [Constitutional] powers. No serious legal expert would doubt that the President has authority to blow narcoterrorists out of the water who are poisoning 100,000 Americans every year. If you watch the SEC [college football] championship game yesterday, the Big 10 [college football] championship game, combine those two stadiums with the number of people - that's how many people are dying each and every year from the poison that's coming from these narcoterrorists. The fact is, George, President Trump has been delegated the authority by Congress to designate terrorist organizations. He's done that. He sent a letter to Congress saying he was going to initiate these strikes. We've had regular briefings about it, including from Secretary of State [Marco] Rubio, including from other high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense. […] What we have now are Democrats who have such x-ray vision and clairvoyance that they know the intentions of narcoterrorists on boats. Yet were so blind to see that they had a president for four years that was operating as a vegetable in Joe Biden. Forgive me if I'm a little skeptical that this isn't all about politics and trying to take down Secretary Hegseth. That's what this whole thing's been about, George. They didn't want him confirmed. They didn't want a realist in place. They didn't want to shift from their pet projects around the world and trying to build democracies in the sands of the Middle East by the barrel of a gun. We have core national interests at stake: the homeland, the Western Hemisphere, the rise of China. That's what this administration is focused on. The Democrats are just upset about that, and they try to create some controversy each and every week, and it goes nowhere."

-

"Well, I'm curious about your pushback on that particular point. With your previous guest, you had zero pushback because he's giving the Democrat talking points like you spew every single week, which is probably why your ratings are so bad. But to make the point, what I'm saying is that you're trying to divert the attention from what the American people actually support. 75 percent of Americans support us blowing narcoterrorists out of the water in the Caribbean who are trying to poison Americans. There's no real legal debate about the ability to do that. Now, you could have a policy discussion about it, which now you see the Democrats pivoting from the second-strike war crimes allegation to really what this whole thing is about - should we do it be doing in the first place? I have way more sympathy for my friends, my cousins, my neighbors, those people who've been poisoned by these narcoterrorists, people have been skinned alive by these by these cartels that they bring people to United States than I do for these narcoterrorists. That's just the reality of the situation. There's legal justification for it. [President Trump] is doing it. We do have more of a focus on our interests now in the Western Hemisphere, and I'm thankful for that."

-

"George, like I said, what we're talking about here is the narcoterrorists poisoning Americans. This attempt to try to focus on a pardon is classic, because you've lost the debate now on the narcoterrorists question. Because at the beginning of the week, you had Democrats actually on camera saying [servicemembers] should disobey orders. That's what Senators Kelly and Slotkin were saying: 'you should disobey orders'. They went so far as to say that if you don't do that, you might get prosecuted down the road. It's hard to overstate how problematic that is for the chain of command and for our military. The Democrats had their shot at all this [last election], and it was rejected. They wanted to have DEI struggle sessions in our military, transgender surgeries, recruitment was way down. The fact is, under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, recruitment is sky high. Morale is sky high. They're upset about that because they had an agenda that said that America could be everywhere all at once all the time. Now, we have a president that's a realist, focusing on core national interest, including protecting Americans from being poisoned by the narcoterrorists."

Senator Schmitt Blasts Democrat Video Urging Servicemembers to Break Chain of Command, Defends Secretary Hegseth:

"When you press them on what orders are they talking about, they had no answer except to say that somehow [servicemembers] should be guessing along the way. It's ridiculous. It's really ridiculous. This is kind of the rabbit hole of Trump Derangement Syndrome that they can't let go. They can't believe that he won. They didn't want Hegseth to be the Secretary of War. They fought it. He was their number one target. They failed at that. So now, you just have a series of issues that come up every week to try to undermine this President, the Secretary of War, and it's not working. They're going to carry out their mission. They executed another strike of a narcoterrorists just this past week. Those will continue, and they're completely authorized. I reviewed the 40-plus page memo by the Office of Legal Counsel. There's JAG officers in these rooms, George, every time there's a strike. So again, the narrative at the beginning of the week that these [strikes] were war crimes, that's clearly fallen away. And now the Democrats are peddling another lie."

-

"I reviewed the [Inspector General] report, and it's a nothing-burger. The fact is, there were allegations this was confidential or classified information. It wasn't. There were no operational integrity problems. Operation Rough Rider was executed flawlessly. So was [Operation] Midnight Hammer. You can't really call that into a question. There was no confidential or classified information that was disclosed. And again, I think the bigger concern that you didn't have a cry about from the Democrats was when Secretary Lloyd Austin went in for a medical procedure and was incapacitated and didn't tell the president. Literally, we had a Secretary of Defense that wasn't on duty, and nobody knew about it. That's a real problem. This was a nothing-burger, and that's what the [Inspector General] report that I read last week and the SCIF indicated."

-

"Remember when the so-called scandal started? It was about classified information being disclosed. It wasn't classified information. So, you pivot to this sort of sensitive information, but there was no risk. There was no risk. And by the way, I'll point out Signal is approved by the U.S. government for communications. So, if you want to have a broader discussion about that, we probably can. But I think the bigger issue was, in the previous administration, you had real operational risk, you had a Secretary of Defense that was incapacitated in a surgery, and nobody knew about it for days. That's a problem."

###