“There’s a theme with these red-state Democrats,” James O’Keefe remarks to Ed Martin. Indeed there is — a need to moderate their positions in order to either get Republican votes, or to keep those voters home. Project Veritas launched their latest video last night in exposing double-talk from those red-state Democrats in the Senate, this time targeting Missouri’s Claire McCaskill:
Most of this comes from McCaskill’s campaigners, as it did with their undercover conversations with Phil Bredesen’s team in Tennessee. Some of it, though, comes directly from McCaskill herself. For instance, McCaskill makes it clear that she’ll support an assault-weapons ban and a ban on “high-capacity mags” once Democrats take the majority in the Senate:
MCCASKILL: “Well if we elect enough Democrats we’ll get some gun safety stuff done. They won’t let us vote on it, we’ve got 60 votes for a number of measures that would help with gun safety, but McConnell won’t let ’em come to the floor.”
JOURNALIST: “Like bump stocks, ARs and high capacity mags…?”
MCCASKILL: “Universal background checks, all of that… But if we have the kind of year I think we might have I think we could actually be in a position to get votes on this stuff on the floor and we’d get 60 [votes]…”
JOURNALIST: “So you would be on board with the bump stocks and… high capacity mags.”
MCCASKILL: “Of course! Of course!”
O’Keefe notes that none of these issues appear on McCaskill’s website or in her campaign rhetoric. McCaskill has also kept her distance from gun-control activist groups like Moms Demand Action (MDA), which has stridently demanded rollbacks of Second Amendment protections protected under recent court precedents. Team McCaskill member Rob Mills says that’s just for public consumption, telling the undercover PV operative that McCaskill is coordinating with MDA on the down-low — including hiding their volunteers in the campaign:
MILLS: “But she doesn’t openly go out and support groups like ‘Mom’s Demand Action’ or just like other groups that are related to that. Because that could hurt, her ability to get elected. Because people like see that and they’re like well I don’t want to support her even though they stand for the same policies…”
MILLS: “She’s worked out stuff with Mom’s Demand Action to make sure that she can support their goals without supporting the organization openly. And you know, Mom’s Demand Action does the exact same thing. Like a lot of our volunteers are actually from there. She’s really good about strategy and making sure she has a goal and can get there.”
How many volunteers for MDA currently work on McCaskill’s campaign? Seems like a question other journalists might want to ask McCaskill and MDA.
It’s perfectly understandable, if not terribly honest, for a red-state Democrat to downplay these issues in a state Donald Trump won by nearly nineteen points two years ago. However, perhaps that voter base should be better informed on McCaskill’s plans to remove the president for whom her state voted. Her campaign seems pretty convinced that McCaskill’s working toward Trump’s impeachment:
JOURNALIST: “So, here’s the real question, Claire holds off on impeachment to get the moderate. What do we tell the moderates when we drop the impeachment hammer afterward?”
WINFREY: “Get over it. It was a national security question. That information was confidential, and she did her duty by not revealing the information until afterward.”
It sounds like McCaskill’s message after the election to voters will be “get over it” on a broad range of issues, assuming she can convince enough of them to vote for her as a “moderate.”
One point about the video itself arises from the exchanges. It appears that Project Veritas may have had these operatives embedded in the campaigns for months. At one point, a target references a conversation the operative had with McCaskill “two months ago.” That’s some serious investment into these stories, and perhaps the other red-state Senate Democrats running in this cycle should do a crazy Ivan or two to clear their baffles. Or perhaps it’s too late for that now.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member