From 'The Conversation': Sen. Eric Schmitt on being a White House whisperer and Senate budget reformer

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

News, Daily News, Politics, Government

3.9 • 699 Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt is a lawyer, former state attorney general and a skilled navigator of the old — and new — wings of the Republican Party. He also has another title: White House whisperer. Schmitt joins POLITICO’s Dasha Burns to talk about his closeness with the Trump administration, driving the Senate’s $9.4 billion rescissions bill, his involvement with passing Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” his belief in Medicaid reform, the controversy over the release of the Epstein files and what he describes as his “America First” — but not isolationist — foreign policy approach. “I think a slur that's often uttered is that it's an isolationist point of view,” Schmitt told Burns. “That's not true at all.” (Note: This interview was conducted before the Senate and House passage of the rescissions bill.) Plus, POLITICO reporter Ben Jacobs digs into his reporting on social media influencers running for office and how the phenomenon is reshaping electoral politics. Listen and subscribe to The Conversation with Dasha Burns on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	presented by BP.
0:02.0	Hello, hello and welcome to the conversation.
0:11.0	I'm Dasha Burns, White House Bureau Chief for Politico,
0:14.0	and every week on the show,
0:16.0	I invite one of the most compelling power players in Washington and beyond
0:20.0	to talk about how they're navigating
0:22.5	and shaping this incredible era of American politics. Boy, and this week was another crazy one.
0:30.5	Let's do a little vibe check. I'm sure you're all feeling it. It's been hot. It's been swampy.
0:34.6	I'm understanding why Washington, D.C. is called the swamp. And in
0:39.7	addition to the chaotic weather, the news cycle brought a good bit of chaos, especially for the White
0:44.5	House on this Epstein stuff. The MAGA meltdown has not stopped. The White House has tried to
0:50.8	quell it. It's not working so far. And it is becoming a serious problem for this administration
0:56.7	and a serious distraction, which is really, really frustrating for President Trump. We've seen
1:02.1	him lash out about it several times now this week. It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by
1:07.5	the Democrats and some stupid Republicans.
1:13.0	We also had a ton of action on the Hill.
1:16.0	We had the rescissions bill on the Senate floor. This is the $9.4 billion clawback in spending trying to codify some of Elon Musk's
1:22.3	doge cuts.
1:23.3	And in the middle of all of that, I got to sit down with Senator Eric Schmidt, who actually was
1:29.2	leading the rescissions bill on the Senate floor. We talked earlier in the week before that bill
1:33.8	passed. He might not be a household name in your household. But the most important house in this
1:39.4	city, the White House, yeah, he really matters to them because he's really become their go-to on the Hill.
	...

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