James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas reporters have caught not only McCaskill staffers but also Claire McCaskill herself sharing thoughts on any number of issues they would rather the voters not hear.
As Democratic candidates have moved to the left in states like Missouri that have moved to the right, they have come to understand that honesty is not the best policy, at least if they want to get reelected. Said campaign staffer Nicholas Starost, “Claire distancing herself from the party is gonna help her win more votes.”
One issue on which the McCaskill campaign appears to deceive voters is guns. In her brief exchange with an undercover reporter, McCaskill explained that “if if we elect enough Democrats, we’ll get some gun safety stuff done.” When the reporter brought up “bump stocks, AR’s, and high capacity mags,” McCaskill reflexively said she had voted to ban “most of those things before.”
Field organizer Carson Pope clarified that gun safety, from the campaign’s perspective, included a ban on “semi-automatic rifles.” Staffer Rob Mills thought McCaskill would go after handguns if she could. All agreed that anti-gun talk has to be done on the QT because a “bunch of Republican voters” still support her. Said Mills of his boss, “She’s worked out stuff with Mom’s Demand Action [an anti-gun group] to make sure she supports their goals without supporting the organization openly.”
What comes through in many of conversations with different McCaskill staffers is the contempt in which they hold swing voters. To deceive those voters, McCaskill runs an ad that shows the Border Patrol Council endorsing her. Her staffers clarified, “She’s endorsed by not the Border Patrol or ICE or any of that bull**** like that. She’s endorsed by the union.”
Said staffer Carson Pope, “Claire’s not in favor of building the wall at all. She said that’s really a stupid f***ing idea. What she is in favor of is DACA.”
The McCaskill staffers also seemed eager to impeach President Trump for something or another and believed McCaskill thinks as they do. When asked how she might explain her vote to conservative Missourians, staffer Glen Winfrey suggested she say, “Get over it. That president sucked. Let’s move on.”
Starost, who “love[s] Obama to pieces,” expressed disappointment that Obama’s presence in the state would do McCaskill no good. When the reporter suggested McCaskill and Obama shared the same liberal views, Starost said, “Yea. People just can’t know that.”
This, by the way, was installment one. There is more to come.
