‘She has a bunch of Republican voters … They’re not going to look into it. They’re just not…’
(Ben Sellers) On the heels of its major investigative series into the corrupt “resistance” forces of socialists embedded within the federal bureaucracy, James O’Keefe and Project Veritas have gone beyond the beltway to examine what campaign staffers are saying about their candidates in key battleground races.
After looking at corruption in the surprisingly tight Oregon gubernatorial race and exposing the liberal leanings of Tennessee Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, the third in the series takes on the false campaign promises of Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill.
McCaskill, a Democrat who was once a shoe-in for re-election, was overtaken in the polls by Republican Josh Hawley in August, but through all the drama of the September Brett Kavanaugh confirmation—with McCaskill declaring early that she would vote against Trump’s second the Supreme Court appointment—the race has remained neck-and-neck.
Both candidates have hovered within a percentage of each other, according to the RealClearPolitics average. But momentum favors the GOP in a state that voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton by a nearly 20 percent margin, or half a million voters.
McCaskill was able to coast to victory on the coattails of Obama’s re-election in 2012—with her opponent, Todd Akin, running a flawed campaign marred by a misstatement about “legitimate rape” that hung in the national headlines.
This time, however, McCaskill has been forced to run on the issues. And like other Democrats hanging on in traditionally red, Southern territory, that can mean a delicate balance of lies and political theater.
“Sen. McCaskill hides her true views from voters because she knows they won’t like them,” O’Keefe says in the video.
One of the issues the video highlights is McCaskill’s opposition to Second Amendment rights. While the senator is candid in conversations with a ‘friendly’ audience about her support of Draconian gun-control measures—including bans on semiautomatic rifles and, possibly, handguns also—O’Keefe says there is no mention of gun control on the campaign trail or her website.
Rob Mills, a deputy regional field director for McCaskill’s campaign, confesses to the undercover Project Veritas journalist that the reason is “because she has a bunch of Republican voters … They’re not going to look into it. They’re just not.”
Mills says that McCaskill has worked out arrangements with gun-control advocacy groups like Moms Demand Action “so that she can support their goals without supporting them openly.”
The video also catches staffers saying that McCaskill panders to conservative voters by distancing herself from Obama, despite sharing many of the same political values as the former president.
Some staffers even say that McCaskill would support impeaching Trump if Democrats were to take Congress. Though it could mean political suicide in her 2024 re-election, staffer Glen Winfrey says the senator would tell moderate voters to “get over it.”
But, he says, in his mind McCaskill would have good reason for concealing her position from voters.
“It was a national security question. That information was confidential, and she did her duty by not revealing the information until afterward.”
Thus far, the effort to impeach Trump has hinged on the outcome of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation, now in its 17th month and unlikely to conclude before the midterms.
While Mueller has secured the cooperation of several former Trump associates indicted on unrelated tax-evasion charges, he has not presented any charges to date linking the Trump campaign to conspiracy or collusion with Russia to hack or otherwise undermine the 2016 election.
Despite the many holes in the case, Winfrey suggests impeachment would be inevitable if the political circumstances were favorable—and that Democrats would be entirely justified by virtue of the fact that “that president sucked; let’s move on.”
The video also calls into question McCaskill’s position on border security, with her staffers saying that a campaign ad released by the border patrol union was deceptive in implying that she would support a physical wall.
“She’s very pro-DACA, pro-Dream Act,” says Carson Pope, a campaign field organizer. “…She’s endorsed by the union that works with the border patrol—and that’s really only because she’s good with unions.”
O’Keefe promises more videos to come, both from Missouri and from other states, as Project Veritas continues its push for transparency.
“We just want the politicians to come clean—we want them to come out and say it,” he says.